NUJ Media Summit Focused On Building Rivers Reputation Capital – Media Guru

The forthcoming Media Summit being organized by the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) in Port Harcourt aims at building a formidable reputation capital for Rivers State.

Chairman of the Media Summit Planning Committee, Ignatius Chukwu disclosed this on Monday, October 20, 2025 while delivering a special lecture at the Weekly Strategy Meeting of Kristina Reports, a virtual newsmagazine based in Port Harcourt, Rivers State.

Chukwu, who is the Regional Manager, South-South of BusinessDay Newspapers, spoke on the topic: “Becoming A Subject Matter Expert in Journalism with Particular Focus on Grassroots Reportage”.

He opined that journalists are supposed to be agenda setters for public policy formulators, admonishing them not to shirk their responsibilities of swaying policies that attract good governance and delivery of democratic dividends to the people.

“I want to say I’m the Chairman of the NUJ Media Summit, and I’m happy my brother and son, Godswill Jumbo, is a member of that committee.”

“What we are doing there is to see how journalists can set the agenda. They call it agenda setting. But we have abandoned agenda to other setters. Let us grab back our agenda.”

“What does that mean? Let us dictate what will be the reputation capital of River State. What will Rivers State be known for? It’s up to us.”

He informed that the Summit will create avenues for training and retraining of journalists, as well as empower them to scale up their capacity to report issues better thus influencing how society works.

“What we want to do is so that journalists will be retrained; and we retrain them on how do we set agenda? And how do we decide what Rivers State is to be known for? Do we leave it in the hands of violent people, noise makers?”

“For every report, every negative report we do, we do two positive reports. We draft a report on the reputation capital that will attract investors.”

“The more investors come here, the more they will have investment in the Press. The more they can sponsor our annual events. But the more they run away, they will go and sponsor Lagos State and Abuja.”

“Then we will now travel from here, go there, and pick crumbs from the table. While there are things that run away from our region. If the political class, if other people are not interested in Rivers State, let the journalists take over Rivers State and decide it is in the hands of the people.”

Publisher and Chief Executive Officer of Kristina Reports, Godswill Jumbo thanked the media luminary for his excellent delivery and the mentorship he has been offering to younger journalists over the years, appealing to him to sustain that trajectory, noting that his efforts are paying off.