Has Konbini bowed out from Nigeria?

Konbini

French owned media company, Konbini showed up in Nigeria sometime in 2016, with deep pockets and a desire to take its chunk of the media revolution that seemed to be springing up in Nigeria at the time. And there was quite a revolution; from indie media houses like Big Cabal, Happenings.ng and PartyJollof to well funded media startups like Ringier’s Pulse and Naij.com (now legit.ng), everyone seemed keen on finding a formula that worked for Nigeria’s teeming post millennial population and turning their attention into revenue. Konbini became one of the industry’s top contenders, with its flashy graphic work, its budget for video experiments and its affiliations with its other much more established international bureaus.

Yet, Konbini never really climbed to the top of pile It had a great public profile, and was well regarded by its audience, but never really gained that respect from the culture necessary for a media platform to truly influence. This could be because the French owners of the company instituted a rigid editorial code that only praised content, but never really offered any in-depth critique or the fact that the magazine’s team stayed largely out of the social gathering that were happening across the city of Lagos. Whatever the reason, the millennial audience never really accepted it as Nigerian, even though its Nigerian bureau was staffed almost entirely by Nigerians.

Things seemed to have ground to a halt on the 27th of September 2019, when the shows social media abruptly stopped posting content across platforms. A little research shows that both of the magazine’s editors have moved on to other projects and the site remains dormant, only recycling previous content.

What does this mean for Pulse and Legit.ng if indeed Konbini ran out of money and excuses to continue to take stabs at the Nigerian entertainment industry, we still have time to find out.

 

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