Readership of Oriwu Sun community newspaper in Ikorodu, Lagos State, Nigeria

Community newspapers are designed to fill the information gap created by the urban-centric nature of conventional media houses. This aim cannot be achieved without reading the disseminated messages by the target population. This study assessed the readership of Oriwu Sun community newspaper in Ikorodu area of Lagos state. Multistage sampling was used to select 240 respondents from three Local Government/Council Development Areas. A structured questionnaire was administered to elicit information on demographic characteristics, awareness, readership status and readership scores from the sampled respondents. Data were analysed using frequency counts, chi-square and PPMC at 0.05 level of significance. Results showed that respondents had the mean age of 39 years; 59.2% male; mostly with higher education (66.0%) and had lived in the community for about 16 years. Many of them (76.0%) were aware of the community newspaper, and 65.0% reported that local content was the main attraction for its readers while nonreaders were constrained by access (50.2%). Despite the low readership base, the community newspaper had high readership scores among the readers. Education ( 2 = 30.147, p ≤ 0.05) and perceived size of community ( 2 = 11.286, p ≤ 0.05) were significantly related to the readership of the community newspaper. It is therefore recommended that the publishers should improve on their Oriwu Sun community newspaper distribution strategies.


Introduction
Communication is crucial to the success of any human development effort.In rural development programmes, the rural community newspaper plays a great role in increasing the awareness, and adoption of recommended ideas, technologies, practices and strategies among the rural people through targeted information and motivational messages (Anaeto and Anaeto 2010).Its functions include: promotion and celebration of community life; a medium of mobilisation; integration function (as it links local community to the state and national levels); source of transmission of social heritage; entertainment; and provision of ideas to guide policies and programme formulations.Hence, community newspapers are at a vantage position to articulate and highlight the progress and problems of the rural communities.
The mass media in Africa and especially Nigeria have tended to neglect and underreport the rural areas as they do not consider them newsworthy.Community newspapers thus become vital in bridging the ensuing information gap.Agba (2002) opined that groups and communities are most interested in affairs that concern them.This is corroborated by Udoakah (1998) that it would be of interest to community members to read about their own efforts at improving their lot, the problems they encounter daily, their ingenuities in tackling their problems and feats in different facets of life.Emke (2007) also stated that community newspapers assist a locality in defining itself, celebrating its values, promoting development, and cultivating a sense of social cohesion.Hence, newspapers in rural settings which report local community affairs in the area of agriculture, rural problems, needs, priorities, health, education, information system, housing, assessment of local government activities and general infrastructural conditions contribute in no small measure to the overall development of the rural communities.In fact, a rural community newspaper is defined by community ownership, access, democratisation, local content and rural audience development.Anaeto and Anaeto (2010) affirmed that rural community newspapers are developmentoriented as they seek to provide information and knowledge that will equip the rural people and accelerate development in the rural communities and also help to serve as an instrument of public dialogue, education, mobilisation and local assertion.The paper is thus, a catalyst for rural development, providing a local market place of ideas for the acceleration of local development.
Community newspapers help fine-tune the world view of the down-trodden, give them voice and bring them closer to decision making processes at the central level.Realising this, the founding fathers of Nigerian politics, Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Dr. Nnamdi Azikwe established provincial newspapers which served as the springboard for the establishment of radio and television stations in the 60s and 70s (Ate and Ikerodah, 2012).Some of the community newspapers that have operated in Nigeria were packaged for exclusive audience based on the language of expression e.g.(Udoakah, 1998 andAgba, 2002).Others include Ibadan news in Ibadan, Remo Star in Abeokuta, Oke-Ogun News, Saki and Oloye News, Igbeti Oyo state.

Udoka
Among these hordes of community newspapers, Oriwu Sun of Ikorodu area of Lagos state arguably stands out due to its perennial presence.The paper was launched on the 25 th April, 1985 with the aim of sensitising, informing and educating the people of Ikorodu division of Lagos state, thus empowering them to participate actively in the development of their district.The journalists make use of the publication to attract the attention of the authorities to the living conditions of the people of Ikorodu division, Lagos State.Indeed, the fact that the newspaper's publications (reports, editorials, analyses, etc.) have often been used as a basis for the implementation of local government projects is evidence of its acknowledged professionalism and interest in the community wellbeing.
The newspaper contributes to sensitising the community members about their living conditions and in so doing acts as an intermediary between the government and the governed.Its format was initially a 24 to 36 -page black and white newspaper.Today, several editions have up to about 160 to 200 pages, all-colour newspaper printed on bond paper instead of the normal newsprint.The main topics covered include social concerns, cultural and traditional matters, news, current affairs and the activities of the local and national governments as well as of high-profile personalities -all keeping pace with readers' interests (International Programme for Development Communication, 1999).It has a monthly print run of between 2000 and 5000 copies.
Considering that the paper has been in print for about 30 years, there is the need to appraise its reach among the target audience of the newspaper.Hence, this study assesses the readership of Oriwu Sun community newspaper in Ikorodu area of Lagos state.The specific objectives of this study were to:  describe the demographic characteristics of the respondents,  ascertain the awareness of the community newspaper among the respondents;  assess the readership status of the community newspaper among the respondents.
 examine the relationship between respondents' demographic characteristics and readership of the community newspaper.

Methodology
Ikorodu Local Government Area (LGA) is made up of the LGA and five Local Council Development Areas.The LGA headquarters and two LCDAs (Ikorodu-North and Ikorodu-South) were randomly selected.Two wards each were randomly selected from the selected LCDAs as well as from the LGA.From each ward, 40 respondents were randomly selected to give a total of 240 respondents for the study.Structured questionnaires sometimes administered as interview schedules were used to elicit information from the sampled respondents.Readership as a construct was conceived as readership score and status.Readership score, which was the dependent variable, was measured as an index of the depth of readership as adapted from Readership Behaviour Scores developed by Readership Institute (2005).It was derived from the computation of frequency and completeness of reading the community newspapers.The mean score arising from the indices generated was used to categorise readers into low and high score of readership. Measures

Demographic characteristics of Oriwu Sun readers
Table 1 shows that the mean age of the respondents was 38.4 years.This suggests the presence of a youthful and vibrant category of respondents whose views will continue to matter for many years to come.The majority of respondents (59.2%) were male.Also, the majority of respondents (66%) had higher education which implies high literacy level in the study area.Most of the respondents (68%) were employed with a majority (34%) being paid employees.This can be attributed to the fact that Ikorodu is a commercial centre where there are many government and private-owned organisations.Most of the respondents (52%) indicated that their community is medium to large in size.This is attributable to the fact that Ikorodu is among the five administrative divisions (Ikeja, Badagry, Ikorodu, Lagos and Epe) that constituted Lagos State, hence the probability to view it as a small community is low.Also, the mean length of living in the community was 16.6 years.The long length of residency makes their views important as this implies good knowledge of the community and its workings.

Respondents' awareness of Oriwu Sun community newspaper
Table 2 shows that majority of the respondents (76.2%) were aware of the community newspaper while about a quarter (23.8%) were not aware of its existence.This shows a moderately high popularity of the community newspaper in the community.However, considering the length of establishment of Oriwu Sun in the community (about 30 years), it is disturbing that a sizeable number of the residents (23.8%) still claimed not to be aware of the newspaper's existence.

Readership status of Oriwu Sun community newspaper
Results in Table 3a show that the majority of respondents (56.7%) do not read the Oriwu Sun.This is an indication that the community newspaper had low readership base in the community.A larger proportion of the readers (20%) however, read the community newspaper at their work place probably due to the fact that most of the government and private organisations in the area subscribed for copies of the community newspaper, making it possible for their employees to have access to it.Many (36%) read the community newspaper every month.This indicates that the monthly nature of publishing the newspaper coupled with organisation's subscription being the major distribution method propelled many of the readers to reading it every month.Only a few pages of the community newspaper were, however, read by majority (70%) of the readers.This is an indication that the readers largely skimmed through the community newspaper to read aspects that interest them.
The majority of respondents (65%) read the newspaper because of local news.This implies that readers are attracted and attached to the paper because of its local content and the result is consistent with the findings of National Newspapers Association (2011) that a primary reason for reading local newspapers among local residents is to obtain "local news/local information".Also, most of the readers (37%) read and discard.This implies that the respondents do not keep record of the paper for later references.
Further, access (50.6%) or not knowing how and where to get the community newspaper (26%), affordability (9.2%) and language barrier (13.8%) were identified as a major impediment to readership of the newspaper.This is an indictment on the distribution pattern of the paper in the study area and it may be due to reliance on government and corporate patronage as opposed to individual paper sale for its sustenance.
Some of the readers (35.6%), however, suggested the addition of entertainment content to enhance readership of the community newspaper.This is in consonance with early mass communication theories which noted that because of its heterogeneity a mass society will appreciate different topics in mass medium.
Readership scores of Oriwu Sun community newspaper as calculated for the readers on Table 3b showed that most of the readers (61.5%) had high readership scores as against 38.5% that had low readership scores.This implies that the readers of the newspapers were highly-committed to its reading and this could be as a result of the paper's content keeping pace with the interest of its readers.(2011) and Agba (2002) that education has positive relationship with readership.Since the paper is published in the English language, one has to have some measure of education to read and understand the newspaper.In addition, it is suggested that readers' perception of their community size may affect the depth of reading the newspapers as the information needs of a community vary with its make-up.However, there were no significant relationships between sex ( 2 = 1.012, p ≥ 0.05), employment status ( 2 = 3.425, p ≥0.05), occupation ( 2 = 7.510, p ≥ 0.05) and readership.This shows that sex, employment status and occupation have little or no influence on the how deep a respondent is involved in reading the community newspaper.Correlation analysis on Table 4b showed that age (r = 0.118, p ≥ 0.05) and length of residency (r = -0.003,p ≥ 0.05) had no significant relationship with readership.The result is an indication that readership of Oriwu Sun was not influenced by one's age nor the number of years one has lived in the community.However, this contradicted Stamm (1985) and NNA (2011) studies on community newspapers readership that indicated that an individual's tie to place (length of residence) and age are associated with the individual's newspaper readership.

Conclusion and recommendations
The Oriwu Sun community newspaper had low readership base in spite of its high awareness status in the study area.This partly resulted from the restricted access to the community newspaper due to poor distribution mechanism, language barrier and non-affordability.However, it enjoyed a high level of readership among the enlightened population.The publishing team of the newspaper should, therefore, improve upon its distribution method and possibly introduce an indigenous language version of the newspaper to enhance its reach.

Nigeria Mirror and Confidence in Anambra; Ebonyi Times in Ebonyi State, Evening Times in Lagos, Idemili Voice in Anambra; Oriwu Sun, Ikorodu in Lagos; Village News, Abeokuta in Ogun State; Ikale News, Ikale in Ondo State and Kaduna State has Zaria-based Gaskiya Tafi Kwabo; amongst others
(Ibo), Amana(Hausa)and Isokan (Yoruba), while others cut across states such as Community Concord, owned by late Chief M.K.O Abiola.Others were locality specific like

Test of relationship between respondents' demographic characteristics and readership of the community newspaper
Result of the chi-square analysis on Table4arevealed that education ( 2 = 30.147,p ≤ 0.05) and perceived size of the community ( 2 = 11.286,p ≤ 0.05) were significantly related to readership of the community newspaper.The result, therefore, implies that educational level and perceived size of the community influence readership of the community newspaper.This is in consonance with NNA