Nigeria, Aug. 8 -- All the metrics for legacy news media are headed in the same direction: less revenue, far fewer reporters and editors, less profit to reinvest and less community clout. - Rory O'Connor

It is not in doubt that journalism around the world is undergoing tremendous changes and threat: technology, dictatorship, problems of funding and self-inflicted wounds (knowingly or unknowingly) inflicted by journalists on the profession in recent times, are some of the threats confronting the profession.

Some of these problems are not new. They are age old and only present themselves in new formats. For instance, in the 1980s when Ray Ekpu was removed as editor of the high-flying Sunday Times, the paper whose sales figures he had move...