I DON’T GET DISTRACTED WITH WOMEN –Publisher City People Seye Kehinde

The Publisher of famous City People Magazine celebrated his 50th Birtday recently where two Governors, Batunde Fashola (SAN) and Ibikunle Amosun of Lagos and Ogun State respectively joined other notable top personality in the society to honor the unassumming Journalist. He Speaks to Timelineng on his life at 50. 

What does being 50 mean to you?

Well, it simply means one; you’re not getting any young. Secondly, you’re getting older and third, the time is almost up. The fourth aspect of it is that, you need to take a review of your life and see what and what is left to be done that you can still do at this particular stage. For instance, it’s like you’re playing football for 90 minutes and you know you have 45 minute halftime break and when you get on the field for the second half, you know you have to do everything you have to do because the final whistle will soon be blown.  

Aside that did you actually felt you’re 50 in the body?

No! For me, life continues. I just saw that day as another date that you need to formally marked the birthday then you move on with life.

When you look back when you are much younger and now that you’re 50, how will you describe the transformation? 

That’s what I’m saying. I still don’t see the transformation because I still do everything I’ve always done. I still report, interview, transcribe myself and every other things I’m used to right from time. Unless I keep reminding or pinching myself and say okay you’re 50 then you have to behave yourself at 50. For me, I’m still my normal self, I’ve not lived the life of being a particular age, I just do my thing the way it comes and if it’s convenient for me fine. I still can’t talk about transformation because I still see it as a continuation. So, I can’t draw a line and say from this particular time to this point 50 begins. It is just that, officially, if you’re filling a form you will fill 50. Now, I believe people when they say, age is just a figure.

If you visualized some of the plans you have for yourself while growing up and what you’ve attained, would you say you’re fulfilled?

I think I feel fulfilled because I’m a kind of person who does not have too long plan. I’m an in life is just to accomplished myself in whatever I choose to do. And once have accomplished myself in what I choose to do and if possible I can do other thing. I’m a very simple person. I’ve never plan to build a castle in the air. The moment I chose to be a journalist, I said to myself that, now I want to be a journalist and I want to be a very good journalist. So, it’s a very limited go that you can achieve in the 10 to 20years time. And once you’ve achieved that, let see whether, you can do other thing. Journalism wise, I think I’m happy with what I’ve been able to do like creating an idea and let it materialized then move on to something else. In nature, I’m also a very restless person. I’m not the kind of person who like to sit-down without any activities around me. So, if there is no activity, I will generate activities to keep me busy because I believed that, any professional who allows himself to stay without doing anything for some time will surely lose form. For you to continue to be something, you have to be proactive by creating something that will keep you going. And the lessons I’ve learnt from being closer to the older people is that they always said that doctor advise them not to slow down because if they do, they will vegetate and they will crash faster. That is why some of them keep attending functions and forming activities around themselves. If I see some people who are in their 40s and they said they want to slow down, and my question is, what will you be doing with the rest of your life?

You talk about your simplicity and people are also talk about it, where did you derive it from?

I derived it from my both parents. Initially, I thought it was a punishment because when I was young, my dad will not allow house help. He insists that, we do things ourselves. Out of all my siblings, I was also lucky that I lived with three to four older people and I was able to learn from them. I’m used to doing all the house shore……..that is why some times when I’m going or when I arrived at office and people want to collect something I’m holding, I feel out of place that, if you’re not there, I will still carry it myself. It is a different thing if I carry something that I need help but if what I’m carrying is just a small bag, I don’t feel comfortable because I’m used to doing things by myself. My parent never encourages us to have house help, even if we have people living with us, they will cater to them not to us. So, I’ve been used to so many things that ordinarily prepared me for what now turn out to be simplicity that people talk about. And I have a humble family and to make matter worst, I lived in Ibadan all my early years. Ibadan is like an ancient city where things were been done in a layback format. That was the orientation, I had while I was growing up, so there is no way I would come out of that and now say that I want to live a flashy lifestyle. I will be out of place if I do that. 

Looking at the way you started your brand (City People) and where the brand has gotten to, was that your plan when you start over two decades ago?

All I saw at that time was a vacuum that need to be filled. I’m talking about a vacuum where you could do story on people, the good, bad and the ugly. For instance, you look at the fashion, style and the entertainment aspect of different sectors of society. A vacuum whereby you report from human perspective. I’ve always love the human aspect of what we do. I never believed that everything should be from the hard angle. People used to say hard-sell and soft-sell but I say to them that, even hard-sell, they have to soften up. I mean the Guardian of this world have to soften up, even Economics of London that used to be very dry, at a point they started having problem with sales and then they started including pictures. So, all the so call hard publications have to soften up for them to get sales. So, I was so happy when that happen, I said it simply means that, journalism have become so hard that people will not want to follow it but when they see faces of a beautiful person and they get attracted and they can now read what you want them to read. But if you keep hitting them with statistic and figures, they will get tired but when they see beautiful faces, it will attract them to the page and when they open the pages, they will realize it’s more than just a beautiful face.  And that was the concept that I had and I felt that, even though there were publications in business before we came in, I felt we could still carve a big niche within that same market and which was what we did and the market accepted us. 

You’re still one of the people that your simplicity does not have limitation in terms of people how you practice your journalism?

You know what influence my own decision? In the course of my career, I’ve seen elderly foreign journalist travel to Nigeria and they will tell you they are looking for Olamide or Wizkid. And anytime I hear that, I look at the man’s age, a man who is around 60-67 who is coming to interview a 24 year old boy. They will travel all the way touring Kaduna, Kano and other state in the country looking for one little person. And for me, it says a lot about them. If people we are copying can be doing all these why must I now decide to say because I’m a publisher and I just sit-down in the office watching TV and all that, trust me, I won’t feel fulfilled if all I do is to just sit-down doing nothing. I don’t want to get rusty; I want to know what is new and what is happening in that industry. I’m worry about the next face of journalism because we lived in a world where everything is changing. In every profession, they will tell you everything is changing. And I said to myself, even this little job we’re doing, how do we do it differently? What is the latest thing they’re doing now? Ordinarily to get a tape recorder now is difficult because most people have started embracing digital midget. If you don’t know that and you still sit-down and say you have a tape recorder, you will just find out that, you won’t even see the cassette to buy.  There was a day; I went to interview a senior colleague in Ibadan, Mr. Felix Adenaike who formerly worked with Tribune and he was telling me that, there is a new gadget now that you can use to record and after you’re done, it will transcribe into words for you. What I’ve learnt in this is that, if you feel you’ve reached the pinnacle of where you’re going and you sit-down, by the time you know what is happening, you just find out that you absolute.  But if you’re still part of the news, you just find out that you’re moving from stage to stage learning new things. The way things are changing now, unless you as a person you decide on your own that, you want to be on top of that thing in another two years, you find out that, you cannot compartible anymore,even if you’re a medical doctor, you may not be able to practice medicine, the way you’ve been practicing it before because when they say somebody has hypertension before, you think he’s an old man but these days, they tell you that, a 13 year old has hypertension and you begin ask yourself and start imagine how things change suddenly. So, a lot of things are changing, the rule of the game has change and it still changing, so there is no way you as a person will sit back and say you’re not part of it or you don’t want to know what the next level is.

In what area do you think some of the younger ones are actually defaulting in the cause of their job presently?

I think the only problem I have and I keep begging our colleagues who are younger and those that I meet, I still talk to them is the area of this online thing. I’m not saying we should not be part of the new development; we’re all part of it, it’s inevitable because it is the next face but we should not leave the rigour aspect of the job where you have to reach out to the concerned parties in other to get the true picture of the story. Not just sit in one corner and feel if you google Seye Kehinde the name will come out and you could just run what you want to run. For instance, you call for an interview and this morning you have text and call whether I’m around and if you can start coming, those are the things that excite me because it shows that you really want to get something fresh but most our colleagues are okay with just going and read up about Seye Kehinde online and then they now report the same thing that people have reported. And they are not adding any new thing to the story. Somebody just told me that the former editor –in-chief of Tribune Newspaper, Mr. Adenaike turned 75 last week. I heard it at a party and immediately I heard it, I quickly send a text to another senior colleague to help facilitate that which he eventually does.  And that was why I have to go to Ibadan yesterday. For me I wanted to handle the same thing he said that we the younger ones are no longer as thorough as were. That they don’t put hard work into those who committed the job. Whether we like it or not, this job demands commitment, hard work and all that because you don’t get good story easily. Just like the popular saying, good thing does not come easy; you have to do some leg work to achieve some certain thing. So, what I’m saying now is that, people should go back to that culture of hard work. We need a bit of hard work because it is not easy to come up with good story. To get a good story, you must interview people, investigate in other to get the true picture of the story. Befor you sit-down to write, you must have down a lot of work like research, background check before going ahead with the story. This days, people tend to leave the hard work and they’re hoping that they will get the big story. 

City People is synonymous to women, are you in anyway get distracted with some of them who wanr 

I don’t get distracted with women. One of the things I settled in my mind from day one is that, glamour, fame women and other things that comes with being a celebrity, I dropped them back. In fact, if not for the showbiz aspect that I focus on, nobody knew who I was for the first five to six years. But when we started doing shows and I started coming on stage, people started seeing my face. I deliberately blacked out because I wanted people to relate with the product not with me, and that help. I’m like an artiste; women will always come if you’re doing well. In our job, women form 90% of our advertisers. So, you cannot do away with them. But it is now left for you to control your appetite for that. Like an elderly friend of mine ones told me that it is not every food they serve you in parties that you eat. You should learn to say no because it is not really good for you but if everything that comes your way, you go for it then you’re bound to have a problem. So, in the case of the women thing, I know my bounds. I try to keep my eyes on the ball in other not get distracted. For example, the second day after I had my birthday celebration, by 6am I was here to transcribe before going to bed with the edition. So, while I was at that party I was saying to myself, don’t take too much of alcohol because I know I have to wake up very early in the morning. We cannot do away with them, we cannot also antagonized them but you have to like carry them along and play along and then know at what point to draw the line. 

You said after your birthday 6am you’re back to the office, how do you find time for yourself?

I try to create time. It’s not really easy but I try to create once in a while. I always lack sleep, so whenever I feel the need for it, I just shutout and sleep. So, what I’m trying to say is that, I listen to my body a lot, when I see that my body is complaining, I just leave every other thing that I have to do, the first thing I will do to catch some sleep because I work over night most times. And of course when I go for event or went outside for appointment outside Lagos, I try to catch a day either arrived there a day before the appointment or stay back after the event. But it’s really…really difficult because there’re so many things I need to put in place in terms of getting good stories and also how to manage business side of it. 

Now that you are 50, do you have some new plans for yourself and also for your brand?

We’re always coming up with new ideas. Like I said, I wasn’t looking at 50 to launch or say anything different but I think it’s a continuous thing. As we move along, when ideas come, we implement it and when there are not ideas like this morning during the meeting, I asked my staff, what they think we need to do and I throw it open for them to bring in ideas. Everybody came up with new ideas and the one that are doable, we jot them down and the ones that are not doable we explain the reason why we cannot do them now. Yes! There have been new things but I can’t say these are the new thing now. As we move along, if I realized there is need to change anything or change the game plan, we will go ahead and change the game plan. 

Apart from your mum and dad that actually influence your ways of life, in your business angle who are some of the professionals that influence your business idea?

There are so many and why I said so many is because I’m somebody who when I was coming into the profession, I looked up to so many players and the list just kept long like uncle Sam for example, he’s one of the Vanguard publisher. This is a man who I read his story when I was in school and all that but you hardly find him anywhere. They will tell you Uncle Sam was at that function but before you know what was happening, Uncle Sam is gone. Apart from Uncle Sam, Dele Giwa, Ray Ekpo, and Dan Agbese are the people that brought me to journalism. They made me see that, you could actually run journalism as a business and make profit out of it. The experiment they made up at that time when they started, I really like the way the four of them came together and how they ran Newswatch. Mr. Bayo Ononuga, Chief Ogunsola this was the man who said he was not going to give Punch out to vendors on credit that they have to pay for it, they throw punches at the vendor and the vendors retaliate but at the end of the day gave Punch a success story. There are so many people like that who I try to learn one of two things from, from the point of view of what they’ve been able to do with their media practice.  

This is a profession where money should not be your number one priority, how were you able to mix business with the profession?

Before I went into setting up of City People, what I first did was that, I went to do some courses in Business and Marketing. I went for three courses in at major business school and the courses had to do with accounting, cash flow, business and all of that. And then, I learnt a lot of lesson from how not to run a business and how to run a business. So it was easy for me by the time I decided to start up because I knew I need to run the business like a business and then curtail your appetite, don’t say because you sold something and you made 100 thousand then you have spent it on beer, no. you most know that the money is not your money but company money.