Introducing Simon Ateba

Simon is a journalist and editor and publisher of Today News Africa on Todaynewsafrica.com. A digital newspaper publishing from Washington DC but focusing on Africa. He was forced to master and to love WordPress in order to thrive.

Show Notes

Website | Todaynewsafrica.com

Twitter | @simonateba

Episode Transcript

Liam: This is Hallway Chats, where we talk with some of the unique people in and around WordPress.

Tara: Together, we meet and chat with folks you may not know about in our community.

Liam: With our guests, we’ll explore stories of living – and of making a living with WordPress.

Tara: And now the conversation begins. This is Episode 44.

Tara: Welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m Tara Claeys.

Liam: And I’m Liam Dempsey. Today, we’re joined by Simon Ateba. Simon is a journalist and editor and publisher of Today News Africa on Todaynewsafrica.com. A digital newspaper publishing from Washington DC but focusing on Africa. He was forced to master and to love WordPress in order to thrive. Hey, Simon.

Simon: Hi, Liam.

Tara: Hi, Simon. We’re so glad to have you on this show. Welcome, can you tell us a little bit more about yourself?

Simon: Yeah, thank you, Tara. I’m so happy to be here today and thank you for having me, thank you for inviting me. This is a big privilege. I know you have thousands of people you will have invited but you decided to invite me so I’m glad to be here. My name is Simon Ateba, I was born in Cameroon, in the French-speaking part of Cameroon. In 2003, I traveled to Nigeria to learn English. That’s why I still have this French accent. I went back to Nigeria and then I learned English and I went to the school of journalism where I spent seven years. I first spent five years doing public relations and advertising, mass communication. And then I did a post-graduate diploma in public relation and advertising. After that, I worked for one of Nigeria’s big newspapers and one if Nigeria’s big news magazine. I was there for a couple of years, on to 2015 and I realized things were changing. People were no more buying newspapers, everyone was reading online. I resigned and decided to form a digital newspaper that was named after me. In 2017, I moved to the US and I relocated to Washington DC and so I rebranded it and gave it a name, Today News Africa on Todaynewsafrica.com.

Tara: That’s so interesting. Your journey from advertising into journalism. You studied journalism, though, right? Can you describe for us a little bit the environment for journalism in Nigeria and why you decided to come to the United States?

Simon: Yeah, first of all, as I said, I wasn’t born in Nigeria, I was born in Cameroon. Nigeria, I went there because I wanted to study in English. I used to speak only French then, I didn’t know anything in English. But I realized everything was coming from the English world, the computers were coming from the English world, the phone, technology, business, everything was either from the US or the UK. And I said, “You know what? Maybe I need to learn English.” I looked for places where I could go. The only place I could really go was Nigeria because Cameroon and Nigeria have an agreement. You can travel from Cameroon to Nigeria without a visa. And you can stay there for three months and after three months you can renew. I decided to go to Nigeria, and I go there and learn English. And I started from the very basic, “Happy, happy, shall we be when we learn our ABC.” [laughter] It was really hard and I remember going to the bank and trying to fill a form and no one could really hear me, and they gave me a form in there like,