NAN Woos Media Outlets, Lowers Subscription Rate

The News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, is set to lower its subscription rate to lure more online subscribers, the agency’s Head of Lagos Operations, Kate Popoola, has announced.

Popoola made the disclosure at a meeting with leaders of the Guild of Corporate Online Publishers, GOCOP, on Monday in Lagos.

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She said the agency will ensure the online operators subscribe to NAN at special rates that will be beneficial to the agency’s operations.

“This is a good beginning and we appreciate the environment in which you are carrying out your business and NAN cannot be removed from that same environment,” she said.

“Today’s gathering is to find a meeting point that will pay the online publishers and also help to move NAN forward.”

Popoola, however, expressed displeasure at the way most of the online publishers of today were pilfering the agency’s stories, without paying the required subscription charges.

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The President of GOCOP, Dotun Oladipo, underscored the importance of the meeting, saying it was necessary to ensure that online media publishers in the country were able to access the services being provided by the agency.

Oladipo, who is also the Chief Executive Officer of Premium Eagle Media Limited, publishers of The Eagle Online, pleaded with NAN to ensure that the services would be at an affordable cost owing to the economic situation in the country.

He said the Guild will, as a group, offer the agency a platform not only to stem the illegal usage of its media content, but would also contribute to enhance NAN’s finances.

He said: “We want to also ensure that people do not continue to infringe on the copyrights of NAN as a foremost media service provider in the country.

“We have seen a lot of people obtaining materials from NAN without appropriate authorisation and this is because they cannot afford to pay for such services.

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“We are hoping that with the information that will be in the public space after this meeting, our members and others will get to familiarise themselves with the legal means of getting such materials.”

NAN reports that GOCOP, established five years ago, is a body of journalists who rose to the top of the profession in the print media but now practicing their trade online as news website owners.

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