My snow boots, ghanabusinessnews.com and me

 By Emmanuel K. Dogbevi

It has been snowing in New York City for over six weeks now. I am told it is the harshest winter the City has experienced in about 20 years. It has been inconsistent though, with intermittent sunshine and sometimes sleet rain.

It is my first experience of snowy weather and the first time that I physically saw and felt snow. The first time it snowed early in the morning, I peeped throw my window excitedly. Apparently, I wasn't the only adult fascinated by snow. When I went out that evening I saw some adults playing and rolling in snow. I also collected and took some snow home!

Well, if you haven't seen snow before, look into your fridge or freezer, the ice flakes you see in there closely resemble snow, and if you have ever been in a butcher's storage facility, it feels something like walking in snow.

When in September I was advised to get a snow boot as I would need it, I spoke to a friend in Europe about it, but this friend said, I didn't need a snow boot. "You should be fine with your sneakers," the friend said. But I realised sooner that indeed, I needed a snow boot. Wearing a snow boot when it is snowing or raining of sleet isn't the same as wearing an ordinary pair of shoes or sneakers.

Anyway, I went ahead and bought the snow boot. The popular brands on the market are quite pricy, so I searched hard till I got one that was reasonably priced and I bought it. My earlier hesitation to get one was also due to the fact that I wouldn't need it when I go back to Ghana. But I am glad I got it finally. It is insulated and is made of some rubber making it waterproof and it keeps the feet warm. The other day I stepped into sludge without knowing and I was fine. An ordinary shoe or sneaker would have been soaked and I don't want to imagine how cold my feet would have felt that evening on 114th Street on Broadway.

The winter is getting grimmer, but I am getting used to it and having a snow boot increases my chances of attending classes and getting into town whenever it snows and I necessarily have to go out.

And for some of you who might know about the business news website that I started five years ago, it has been offline. ghanabusinessnews.com has gone offline temporarily.

I have received several mails including phone calls from some visitors to the site expressing disappointment over the shut down. It wasn't an easy decision to make but it was the only reasonable one under the circumstances.

Meanwhile, as the calls and mails that I received from some of the readers emphasised the importance and relevance of the site which incidentally though, is the only major source of business news out of Ghana, that view did not reflect the position of the advertising community.

The site has to be suspended because of rising costs of running it from a shoe string budget that largely had to come from me, after I have sunk my entire savings into starting and running it after sometime.

Over the five years that the site has been running, traffic has been growing exponentially, and the database has also grown, requiring bigger more efficient servers and services that my meager resources are unable to finance any more. I have become tired depending on the goodwill of some friends and family who have been very supportive along the way. It became impossible to hire skilled writers and programmers because the site does not generate revenue - it is not breaking even.

The business model based on pursuing good quality journalism, building high traffic and then generating revenue from advertising didn't seem to have worked.

The site indeed, achieved remarkably high respect and acceptance worldwide, evidenced in some modest achievements for myself and some of the people who have been working with me, making sacrifices to keep it running. We have been invited to cover and participate in international meetings, workshops and press conferences. Articles on the site also won national awards including an international journalism fellowship - the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship in Business and Economic Journalism at the Ivy League institution - Columbia University in the City of New York.

Since the suspension of publishing of the website, I have been reflecting deeply over not only the future of the site, but the future of journalism in Ghana. Any objective observer of journalism in Ghana in general and business journalism in particular would know that all is not well. Not much can be said of the quality of journalism in Ghana, despite the presence of some very well trained journalists and good editors.

Notwithstanding a constitutional provision that gives journalists protection and the freedom to do their work, most journalists are unable to exercise those freedoms without any encumbrance because the dynamics of media ownership makes it impossible to do so. Most owners of media organisations have more political rather than journalistic goals for establishing these news organisations and they mostly use them for their political objectives, and this has reduced discussions in the media to partisan levels. It is more impracticable for most journalists to focus on news worthy issues, write critical and probing editorials than for them to focus on what politicians are saying or have to say on issues even if what they have to say is foolish.

The least said about the state of business news the better. Business newspapers or business news segments on radio or TV are mostly public relations or advertorials promoting one product or company or some business person. For instance, most news organisations carry what they call 'Stock Exchange News' that only report the stocks for the day. There are hardly any critical and objective examination of company stocks or conduct of stock brokers.

Another example is the fact that, even though Ghana has found oil and has been producing oil in the last three years, there isn't a strong focus and adequate informed coverage of the sector. Most of what is published about the oil sector is often from oil companies themselves or government, even though there are more questions than answers in the oil sector - there is no transparency, nor accountability either by government or the oil companies, both operating offshore or onshore and there is corruption.

The six telecoms companies operating in the country are having a field day ripping off subscribers and providing poor quality service. Vodafone, which bought the state-owned Ghana Telecoms including fibre optic facilities that the government has invested in has now decided to curtail access to broadband Internet to subscribers by 'capping' Internet, eventually making excessive profits. It has also failed to expand landline services in the country, in spite of the fact that it is one of the terms for selling the national carrier to it. But Vodafone's conduct is not being scrutinized in the media.

Journalists dare not probe into the activities of these companies or they would threaten to pull out advertising from their organisations, often leaving the 'small fishes' at the mercy of journalists. Not that 'small fishes' should not be exposed when they break rules and endanger everyone else, but there must be fair coverage under all circumstances - which isn't the case. For instance, it is more likely that a rich and well connected person could commit murder and it would never make the news even if journalists get the information - but more likely to see a poor unconnected 'petty' thief exposed and when arrested sometimes, paraded before TV screens and in newspapers.

As the site goes into hiatus, I am looking forward to exploring further, other means of making it sustainable and then reviving it, even though, after working for 23 years as a journalist and contributing extensively to the global information database and to my country, I don't know how many people I have touched or inspired in my career path, but I do hope that I have somehow touched some people and inspired other journalists. Sometimes I feel that I have done my part - like the Akan proverb says, "humans came to play their parts and not to do all."

Komla Dumor is gone, but what he stood for still remains

This week Ghana, Africa the world and journalism lost one of their finest, Komla Dumor of the BBC.

He was a friend and a brother. Whenever we met we called each other 'my brother'. The last time we met, we were both in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia as guests of the UNECA. 

His departure this week has left all of us hurting. Guest blogger and fellow Columbia Graduate School of Journalism mate, Raymond Bayor writes a tribute to the memory of Komla.

I'm sure Komla Dumor's death—a tragedy that we are all still grappling with—has cast our minds and imaginations in different directions. Earlier yesterday, I woke up to scores of phone calls from friends in Ghana, wanting to know if I had heard about his alleged death. I was tempted to dismiss these calls in an instant, but not when these calls were alarming. I went back and forth on phone, frantically trying to verify what looked like a wild rumor, something I'd rather hate to believe. It came to pass that in their millions, our hearts would remain seared for days and months, if not years, in the flames of the anguish resulting from his untimely departure.

Yes, Dumor attained great, enviable heights at home and abroad. He and a few others--no need to mention their names—excelled where many journalists in Ghana would easily fail today: Rising above the pettiness that's bent on ruining our media landscape. They would ask all the bold, embarrassingly probing questions, whether the issues at stake were about SSNIT or a hotel that a sitting president had interest in.

Thousands have taken to social media platforms to pay glowing tributes to one of the world’s finest broadcasters, but what is the state of journalism in Ghana today? If he was an adherent of the caliber of journalism that’s holding sway in Ghana today, would he attain the pinnacle of his career? For some of our colleagues, the line of distinction between news and hearsay is either blurred or does not even exist at all. We have become willing accomplices to condemnable acts—the very things that we must fight with passion.

Journalism is a calling. And this calling to speak can be a vocation of agony. It’s not a shortcut to fame and influence; neither is it an opportunity to settle personal scores, given that there are ethical boundaries within which we operate, whether in Ghana or around the globe. It’s time the Ghanaian journalist accepted that good journalism is no luxury. Of course, the ability to speak to power, subject politicians to the fire of accountability and pursue the cause of the larger society can never be the preserve of the fainthearted.

Journalism that's not principle or truth-driven is but a means to an end that only those who champion it know. If we all paused and reflected upon our approach to our calling to a profession revered for its nobility, especially in relation to the late Dumor's record, would our nation not be better? The image of journalism in Ghana today, unfortunately, is so battered by a strand of laziness, blatant partisanship and professional misconduct. In fact, it’s almost at its nadir.

His painful death, however sudden, leaves us with the challenge to remain relevant in an environment where the intersection of politics and journalism poses a constant threat to the latter's viability as the fourth estate. From the USA, Asia, Europe through to our native Africa, the outpouring of tributes bears eloquent testimony to his enduring legacy, his shortcomings notwithstanding. What do you and I, as journalists, stand for today? Are our actions a fair reflection of our convictions? We have, it’s sad to note, stridden beyond the contours of our watchdog role in ‘lap dogs’!

Our continent still has considerable democratic deficit, fuelled in part by the failure of various governments to commit to core democratic principles. In the case of Ghana, our democratic ‘resilience’ is nonetheless a pride we talk up so well, pretty much to the envy of other Africans. No doubt, our political parties constitute the fulcrum around which our democracy revolves.

What remains to be seen is the capacity of the media to enrich our political discourse. Beyond the obsession with what’s for or against a particular party, which seems to be the new norm now, the national interest can’t be left to fate. Whereas new parties will likely emerge in the course of time, the role of the media is cast in iron, regardless of the governing party. Not until we rededicate ourselves to the sacred values that inform the very being of the profession, we are definitely on a terminal decline. But I pray our image doesn’t get any worse.  “Hope is a waking dream,” Aristotle, the ancient Greek Philosopher, once said.

God bless Ghana.
By Raymond Yeldidong Bayor.
Email: yeldidong@gmail.com

How time flies, some of the things I don't want to miss at Columbia

By Emmanuel K. Dogbevi

How time flies! It's already six months since I moved to New York to begin post-graduate studies at Columbia University and the first semester is already done!

Before I arrived here, I was briefed and adequately told what to expect, but I suspect that some things were left for me to discover by myself and I did. I discovered too soon that having left the classroom for seven years after completing undergraduate studies, it wasn't going to be easy studying at graduate level and in subjects that I have no background in like Financial Accounting!

Besides, I took it for granted that I would settle quickly in New York City because of my frequent travel experience only to realize that I wasn’t prepared to suck in the City. It occurred to me too soon that this is New York, 'the Big Apple', I still don't feel at home here and that's in spite of the fact that I live in a very comfortable apartment right in the heart of Columbia University's gorgeous campus at the center of the City.

I am also learning too soon that, one year is not a long time, no, it is not. I have just done six months, and unfortunately, as I look ahead to the end of the programme, I am beginning to feel some amount of trepidation – there were some things I didn’t want to miss out on, but it looks like I might have to do more to avoid missing them. I wanted to fully enjoy the city by visiting all the important places and making new friends, I mean good friends that I can take along the rest of my life, but even though I have met some great people here, had some great lunches and dinners, it doesn’t quite seem to me that I have become friends with these incredible people, maybe I am wrong on this, and I will be happy to be wrong.

So far I have been to only a few places, and not too many of the great restaurants in the City yet. I ate once in Chef Yu’s Restaurant on the 8th Avenue and West 42nd Street and the food was great. I also loved the set up of the restaurant, spacious and comfortable.

Even though I am a student both at the Journalism and Business Schools, the programme is structured in a way that I have to take most of my courses at the Business School, and as a result I am missing out on the Journalism School, something I didn’t expect to happen.

Meanwhile, the Business School has a great active networking strategy, but I feel like I am losing out on that as well. The Cluster and Learning Team systems of the School is a great way to stay connected in Columbia but I don’t seem to have maximized that in as much as I would like to, I had hoped to learn some new things and polish my guitar playing skills while here, even though I had contacted a private teacher to give me private tuition, met a friend who wants us to play jams together on campus, I have not been able to – but I have six more months to go and I do hope to make amends.
And before I am done, I am missing some people already - I am missing my amazing Cluster mates. There are some awesome people in the Cluster who have been so good to me, some have been there for me in very difficult times. I am also missing some of the Peer Advisors (PAs) already even before I am done, wish I could mention names here, but for fear of leaving some names out I won’t even start.

Some of the Professors and Academic Staff do so much to make students go through their studies here smoothly. I have come to know some of them well enough to say they are great people.

At least I can mention the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship Program on which I am privileged to be here. The Director, Terri Thompson and her ever supportive Program Coordinator Gary Hill are never to be forgotten duo. They are doing everything possible to make me and my fellow Bagehots as we are called to sail through the program successfully. And these Fellows are a never to be missed ‘crowd’. Wonderful people to be around, I don’t want to miss the chances of spending much more time with them.

Columbia is a great place to be and I hope to make the best of the second and final semester of the program, so help me God.

Taught by Ira Millstein, a Colossus in Corporate Governance

Prof. Ira Millstein

I knew my time at Columbia University would be memorable, but even before the end of A Term of the First Semester, I am having incredible encounters that would stick with me for a very long time, and one of them is meeting the Colossus of American corporate governance, Prof. Ira Millstein.

Prof. Millstein taught me Corporate Governance together with Holly Gregory. These Americans are in my view the epitome and repository of knowledge and competence on matters relating to corporate governance.

The two taught the subject with such depth and passion that left me wondering about the little I knew about the subject before the class began. I have heard about corporate governance and attended a couple of workshops on the subject, but I had until meeting Millstein and Gregory never thought it was far more important than it had been made to appear from all the other times I have heard about the subject.

Prof. Millstein's personality is literally conjoined to the subject. There is a Millstein Centre dedicated to him at Columbia and an annual Millstein Corporate Governance Forum instituted since 2006 at the Columbia Law School where he has been teaching for a long time now.

Prof. Millstein, is a man of character, with intent for greater good and an asset not only to the American people but to the world. Despite his advanced age, I suspect he must be in his 70s, is still alert and consistent and very logical in his line of argument.

During class discussions with other experts, (he invited various people with expertize in different aspects of corporate governance to lecture the class) and he knows when to interject with a comment or question. Never have I seen him for once drift off from the main issue on discussion.

Great people like Prof. Millstein gives hope to the world and humanity, especially in these trying times when the US government has been shut down, and in my own country, Ghana, the news coming out points to a gloomy economy, with the government being accused of not setting its priorities right. The Ghana government has also raised the cost of utilities and other taxes, because it says it needs to pay for the cost of producing the services, and it has a widening budget deficit - in 2012 the government run a deficit of almost 12 percent and as at the end of August 2013 the budget deficit stood at 7.3 percent.

Meanwhile, this same government has been reported to be literally throwing money at its cronies in very suspicious and almost phony national enterprises and projects. And while some of these transactions have been found to be phony, no one has been arrested yet or punished - a very bad example of corporate governance, and it appears we haven't seen the last questionable deal yet, many more are yet to be exposed by the few yet to be compromised journalists who are already coming under great pressure to accept huge gifts like some others have and keep mute.

In such difficult moments, Prof. Millstein gives hope to some of us, who have found ourselves on the side of the people. The majority who are voiceless, and depend on the established order, that is governments to ensure the atmosphere for their existence through the proper administration of public funds and individual investments.

The few in public office and in big business, who control so much of the world's wealth and resources, who swear to the laws of their countries to perform their duties with due diligence and in upholding the law, but fail to do so, not only hurt the people but are more likely to end up in ignominy.

Corporate governance is so important that its pursuance and enforcement should be done with all the passion and dedication necessary for attaining very high levels of efficiency, to protect lives and investments and ensure economic growth.

The ripples of the financial crisis that hit America and Europe in 2008 are still being felt, and the conducts that lead to that incident were clearly in violation of good corporate governance principles among which includes accountability.

Prof. Millstein has made an indelible impact on me, after I have taken his class. On the last day of the class, he organised a party for us and told us he will miss us. I know the class will miss him too. And I will from now on, never write or talk about corporate governance without making reference to Prof. Millstein. He is indeed a Colossus of corporate governance and America and the world owes him gratitude not only for his intellectual contributions to corporate governance, but also for his ethical stand on the issues. He is a good man and the world has been impacted to a large extent by his immeasurable contributions to corporate governance and now I have had the glorious benefit of learning at his feet.


According to his biography, Prof. Millstein who graduated from Columbia Law School in 1949 is the director of the Columbia Law School and Columbia Business School Program on Global, Economic & Regulatory Interdependence.

He is a senior partner at the international law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP and he has counseled numerous boards on issues of corporate governance.

His biography notes that he has counselled among others, the boards of General Motors, Westinghouse, Bethlehem Steel, WellChoice (fka, Empire Blue Cross), the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS), Tyco International, the Walt Disney Co., the New York State Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the Ford Foundation, the Nature Conservancy, and Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

He is a member of the board of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum at the World Trade Center and serves as pro bono counsel to the board of directors of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the agency overseeing the redevelopment of Lower Manhattan.

He was appointed by former Governor George Pataki as chairman of a New York State Commission on Public Authority Reform, which led to the 2009 Public Authorities Reform Act, and he currently serves as chairman of the governor's task force overseeing implementation of the Act.

In addition to his active legal practice, Millstein is the senior associate dean for corporate governance and the Theodore Nierenberg Adjunct Professor of Corporate Governance at the Yale School of Management.

In November 2006, the School of Management renamed its corporate governance center the Millstein Center for Corporate Governance and Performance in honor of Millstein. He is the chairman emeritus, having served as chairman from 1999 to 2005, of the Private Sector Advisory Group to the Global Corporate Governance Forum founded by the World Bank and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). He served as chairman of the OECD Business Sector Advisory Group on Corporate Governance from 1997 to 1998 and as co-chair of the Blue Ribbon Committee on Improving the Effectiveness of Corporate Audit Committees (sponsored by the New York Stock Exchange and the National Association of Securities Dealers) in 1998–1999.

In 1997, he was appointed by Vice President Al Gore and Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin to the U.S.-Russia Capital Markets Forum Working Group on Investor Protection. In 1996, Millstein chaired the National Association of Corporate Directors' blue ribbon commission on director professionalism.

Prof. Millstein is a gift to humanity and I am grateful for the opportunity to be taught by him.

If you ever get to read this blog, Prof. Ira Millstein, remember that I will miss you too, and I will forever remain grateful that you have taught me.

Thank you.

PS: When I wrote this blog I only assumed Prof. Millstein would be above 70 years. I have later been told that he is 87 years.

The America I came to, three months away from home

On Columbia University campus.

By Emmanuel K. Dogbevi

I have not written on my blog for a long time now. While I still can't find time due to the heavy load of academic work, I am going an extra mile this Sunday evening to write something. Something I believe you will enjoy reading and probably learn something from.

As I was growing up, I have always wanted to travel around the world - probably a dream I have just like most children do, and this dream might have been influenced by what we read in books or see on TV. And as much as that was a big ambition, it was a far away dream for someone like me. That was almost an impossibility, a mirage. Meanwhile, I have been told several times that I have a bright future, but the realities of my circumstances made that future dim.

My dream of travelling around the world took a long time to come, while I have had the opportunity to travel around the 10 regions of Ghana reporting on issues from the environment, women and children.

The realities around me almost made my hopes of travelling around the world a pipe dream.

There were times when I have vacillated between very high optimism and the very low ebbs of despair and despondency. There were times in my life that I have almost given up. Moreso, because I have chosen a profession that in my country is often rewarded only when you do it wrong. The only way I have been repeatedly told I could 'succeed' as a journalist is not to tell the truth, not to expose wrongdoing by powerful people, and to accept bribes in various forms. There are many 'journalists' who have 'succeeded' that way, by receiving bribes from corrupt politicians and crooked business people and cronies of people in power.

I have not made money from journalism yet, but the most elating experiences of my career in more than the two decades of practice were not when I have made any material gains but moments when I have alerted the public to danger, dug out and shared useful information and broke some news ahead of others. I have not made money from journalism, but I have kept faith with the profession and it appears the profession is keeping faith with me, no matter how long it took - my patience and endurance are paying off - and some of this characteristics I owe to my Late mother. May her soul continue to rest in peace. She has always told me to be patient. I was a hot-headed little boy, impatient at everything and everyone around me. I am glad I listened to her.
 
I have continued to do journalism even though I have had opportunities to switch to other careers. There is nothing I love more than writing. And indeed, the fact that journalism has the ability to do good, to speak for the downtrodden and voiceless; groups that I have a strong affinity with, probably because of my background growing up in challenging circumstances.

Today, as I write this blog, I am living in New York City, 'The Big Apple'. And I am beginning to realise that living in New York City is every American's dream."It's the place to be", someone had told me. This makes me feel lucky or even blessed.

Besides, I am not only living in New York City but studying at Columbia University, an Ivy League institution rated this year as the World's 10th Best University.

Coming to America after a whirlwind travel around the world in the last two years has been a real big change. A change for the better, I hope and an indication that 'A prophet is not honoured by his own people'. I have mostly felt mistreated and unappreciated in my own country, in spite of the evidence of my contributions to the country's good at my own expense.

In the last three months that I have been living and studying in America, I have come face-to-face with the realities that confront humans everywhere. Despite travelling around the world and meeting different people in different cultures I am still dealing with culture shock in America - details of which I would write about at a latter date.

I am having issues with the food. At one point I almost threw up in class soon after lunch and that has compelled me to do my own cooking at home these days. I eat less outside.

But more importantly, since coming to Columbia I have made some great friends, people around whom I feel very comfortable and happy to be with. My colleagues in the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship and some Cluster mates at the Columbia Business School. There are other really amazing people outside my cluster who have made me feel welcome. Some of the professors and staff of Columbia make life so easy for me.

There are these special people who have made me to feel like I was family and I can't help but mention them, the Maxwells - Dan, Joyce and their children, Patrick and Clare. I spent a weekend with the Maxwells in Boston. There are also Karen Dean and her husband Nathan Waxman who hosted me for two weeks at their apartment before I moved to campus.

I am not done yet with my transition into American society, one academic year looks like a long time, and it has only been three months.