Popoola Releases 3rd Edition of GSM As a Tool For News Reporting in Nigeria

Bennett Oghifo

A renowned political communication scholar, Dr. Tayo Popoola, has  published the third edition of his textbook, GSM As a Tool For News Reporting in Nigeria, earlier published in 2003, barely a year after the arrival of mobile telephone technology in the Nigeria.

The top feature of the latest edition is a segment devoted to Reporting in the post COVID – 19 era.

According to the author, “This latest inclusion is largely driven by the need to strengthen one of the courses l lecture at 400 level in our Department, “Reporting Population Issues”.

He stressed that COVID dealt terribly with a large proportion of our population with high casualties never experienced in the country.

Popoola said Journalism failed Nigerians during COVID -19 due to failure of all the Nigerian information dissemination outlets to inform the citizenry about an earlier influenza of 1918 -1919.

He contends that COVID -19 re-invented the influenza of 1918 – 1919 and therefore, there’s a need to arm media professionals with necessary skills that will empower them to be on top of their game in the event of a future reoccurrence.

This segment of the book further  discussed the technological changes in the Nigerian media landscape in the past twenty years.

The author who was the last editor of Diet weekend newspaper further treated various ways by which media professionals are expected to carry out reporting in the Post COVID era.

Also included in the latest edition of the book is a segment on “Writing the lead for Online media”, “Characteristics of Online media” and “Similarities in news presentation “.

The latest edition further treats “Objectivity in News Writing”, “Steps to objectivity in News Writing” and “Techniques in Objectivity.”

In the phase of changes in the Newsroom after Covid, the latest edition of the book captured the various factors surrounding  Sub’s role in newspaper production.

Through the current edition of the book, Popoola, who is currently the Ag HOD of Mass Communication Department, University of Lagos, has captured the various changes in the Newsroom between the last edition in 2011 and 2025.