He stressed digital media was gradually displacing the traditional, and had become the source of news for the majority of the citizens and could be an avenue for the traditional media to raise money through the internet.

Speaking at the MTN Open Coffee Workshop in Accra yesterday, Mr Ametorgoh said the digital media was the future, stressing that internet is the new “new paper” and the web “is the new newspaper”.

The programme is the  second edition and held on the theme, ‘Digitising and monetising editorial content’ was also used to introduce a product being developed by MTN in partnership with Huawei Technologies Ghana S.A Limited  to help the traditional media to digitise and monetise their contents.

Mr Ametorgoh who spoke on digital journalism said the growing internet penetration which currently stood at 35 per cent with 10.11 million of Ghanaians using internet, bode well for newspapers to switch to digital media. He said the digital to reach  a larger audience in real time.

He said about 5.60 million population of the country were active social media users, and 19.53 million of the citizens were mobile users and 4.9 million were active mobile social users.

The CEO of Digital Lead averred that newspapers could ride on digital platforms to reach a lot of media consumers.

Among other benefits, Mr Ametorgoh said digital media was cost effective and had global coverage with the news consumers who are active partners in the generation of the news.

The Operations Manager of Huawei Technologies Ghana S.A Limited, Cecil Cedric Sovereign for his part urged the newspapers to leverage on the MTN Mobile Newspaper Service (MNS) to reach a larger audience to improve their revenues.

He said the MTN Ghana has nationwide coverage and with about 18 million subscribers and the traditional media could rely on the MTN MNS application to reach all the customers of MTN, saying that could enhance the reach of the traditional media and improve their revenues.

Mr Sovereign said users of the MTN MNS currently had more than 500,000 subscribers and the adoption of the application would save the traditional media the huge cost of printing and distribution of their newspapers.

The Manager of Applications and Internet of Things at MTN Ghana, Mr David Narh said the programme was to create a forum to discuss with players in the traditional media on the digitisation of the products  to reach a larger audience and raise a lot of revenue.

Particularly, he said the workshop would brainstorm thoroughly on the topic of the programme and discuss how the newspapers could “digitise and monetise their editorial content”.

By Kingsley Asare