A reporter calls you for a comment. You sigh. The questions miss the point, the story gets your model wrong, and customers read a version of you that you do not recognise. You blame the press. I understand the anger, but it points at the journalist when it should point at the mirror. Journalists write from what they receive, and founders keep handing them silence.
Consider the scale of what goes unexplained. The 2021 survey by the National Bureau of Statistics and SMEDAN counted about 39.6 million MSMEs in Nigeria, and they contributed about 48 per cent of GDP. Yet reporters who cover politics, oil, exchange rates and crime in a day, with deadlines that never bend. Nobody has hours to study what you do unless you show them. The sector that carries the economy still struggles for space in the stories that shape it.
The pain behind the headline
Founders pour years into a product, then lose sleep over a paragraph that describes it badly. You built the business with savings, nerves and your name, and a stranger summarised it in a sentence. You remember the cousin who asked why the paper made you sound like someone else. You remember the investor who read it and never replied. That hurts.
Yet the stranger only had what you supplied. Reporters work against the clock and rarely know your trade as you do. So tell them what you sell, who buys it and why they pay, in words you would use with your mother. Show proof: sales records, customer stories, receipts and photographs of your premises. Explain how your industry earns, what it costs and where it breaks. Then give them a phone number that someone answers.
Habits that cost you coverage
Journalists are not the enemy of enterprise, whatever the group chats say. They answer to editors, readers and deadlines, and they fear errors as much as you fear losses. Yet founders repeat habits that close doors.
Jargon and acronyms mean nothing outside your office, and a reporter who cannot follow you cannot write you. Ignoring calls, then complaining about the story, helps nobody. Demanding approval of copy before it runs breaks the trust of a newsroom. Slipping cash into an envelope and calling it a relationship harms you, the reporter and the reader. Speaking only when trouble arrives teaches the press to see you as trouble.
Build trust before you need it
Trust grows through acts that nobody applauds. Invite a reporter to your shop, factory or farm and let them watch you work. A reporter who has stood in your stockroom writes with details that no press release can supply. Send data when you have it, even when nobody asks. Correct errors with evidence and courtesy, never with insults. Thank reporters in the open when they get it right. Share failures along with wins, because readers can tell when you hide them, and they trust you more when you do not.
Silence has a cost. When you say nothing, a competitor, a critic or a rumour fills the gap, and the story sets before you wake. A trader in Onitsha, a fintech founder in Yaba, a farmer in Kaduna and a designer in Accra face a choice: explain yourself, or accept the version that someone else writes.
Beyond Lagos
Across Africa the pattern repeats. Nairobi, Accra, Kigali and Johannesburg host founders who build in markets that outsiders misread, and the coverage that reaches investors, regulators and customers abroad starts with what these founders choose to share. Teach the reporter, and you teach the audience behind them. Leave the gap, and the world fills it with assumptions about Africa that you never earned and cannot easily undo.
Journalists are readers who must learn fast, and they remember those who taught them. Africa holds stories of enterprise that the world has not heard, because the builders said nothing. Pick up the phone. Open your doors. Tell it yourself. The media will understand your business on the day you decide to be understood.
.Ochugbua is a results-driven media and marketing leader with 17+ years of experience, including 12 in the media industry. As Digital Sales Manager at BusinessDay Media, she drives digital revenue growth, leads high-performing teams, and delivers innovative advertising solutions. A certified APCON member and award-winning professional, Linda is passionate about mentorship, storytelling, and building transformative platforms in Africa’s media space.
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