Episode 44: Simon Ateba

Hallway Chats - Episode 44: Simon Ateba

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, “You need to fill this.” I wanted to open the bank account and I had money but I couldn’t fill the form. The word I couldn’t really know was next of kin. They gave me these, I asked them, “What is next of kin?” … “But you don’t know what next of kin is?” I said, “No, I don’t know. Do you have a form in French?” And they said, “No, we don’t have any form in French.” It was really hard and I spent an hour in the bank trying to fill the form. Eventually, I was able to fill the form and I decided to go back to school. So I went back to school and learned English. And I did one year starting English and going to all the churches, going to all the places. I did everything I could everywhere I knew that people were having a gathering, I would go there to listen to people, to try to be with people, know how people talk, hear people talk, hear people speak. After that, I went to sit for an exam to go to the school of journalism in Lagos. And I passed and eventually I was admitted and I became the student president at the school of journalism. And there I couldn’t speak English. Eventually when I graduated in 2010, I was the best student in editorial writing and that was like the most difficult cost to doing the school of journalism, because you needed to write perfect English, you needed to think really well, and I was able to do it and I was giving money for doing it. That was really something that was great. Eventually, because I became so successful and covered all the election and went to different places, I got a grant in 2015 from the Ford Foundation to do a report on Nigerian refugees in Cameroon and Chad. When I got there, they arrested me and they accused me of being a spy for Boko Haram. I was a suspected Boko Haram terrorist and he was really– I was there for almost a week and people were protesting everywhere in Cameroon, in Nigeria. Amnesty International issued a statement, human rights watch. Even though it was a sad situation, it gave me publicity. It made people know who Simon Ateba was, what he was doing. Then people got to know where I was going, I was an investigative journalist. I’ve done thousands of stories before but it didn’t really attract the attention that my arrest in Cameroon attracted. And because I became that popular, I became a frequent guest on TV shows and people would ask me, “Tell us how were you arrested? What did you eat there? Did you feel like dying? How was it? How many days?” I also learned to do a few interviews like the one I’m doing today with my African accent. It was something that brought me to the limelight, it was this sad event that brought me to limelight. But also I learned a lot from it and it allowed me to– they did a TV documentary on me. I did 50 TV interviews and radio interviews, I was everywhere because people were trying to understand what Boko Haram is and the situation in West Africa terrorism, politics. Yeah, I’ve come a long way as a journalist. But in 2015, I decided to– because people were no more buying hard copies, and I decided to leave and to form a digital newspaper. But I didn’t know anything in WordPress so I hired this guy from India and several of them, and I paid them. I ran out of money, I didn’t have money anymore and they kept charging me for little things. I wanted to update a new plugin which only would take a week, I needed to change the visual aspect of my website, it would take two weeks, and it would take $200-$300. After some time, I couldn’t bid them anymore and I decided, maybe I should learn this thing. I’ve learned English really well, I came from a place where I could speak only French, I didn’t know anything in English. It took me years but eventually, I mastered it. “Maybe I can learn WordPress.” That’s how my journey into trying to learn, trying to understand and trying to master WordPress study.

Liam: Wow.

Tara: I know. I really want to go back and hear about all the things that you’ve been interviewed about with your arrest but I think we only have a half hour.

Liam: Yeah, there’s a lot there. Certainly, one string that I’m picking up on is you’re not afraid of challenges and your ability to persevere. That’s quite a story, Simon. Thank you for sharing that with us.

Simon: Thank you.

Tara: Going back to the question of what brought you to the US, had you been here before? What brought you here?

Simon: That was quite a successful story. From this website I set up in Nigeria, I began to have a lot of people who have written me. I was having thousands and thousands of people going there so I established my authority, people knew me because I was on TV. In 2016, I went to the US embassy and decided to come and cover the US presidential election. Everyone was talking about it, it was the first time we thought a woman was going to be the president of the most powerful country on Earth. It was a big thing for me and I decided to cover it in New York, but I had friends who live in DC. I knew all the accreditation, I could be here for some time because I came weeks before the election. In 2016, I went to New York to cover the presidential election. I went to Clinton’s campaign headquarter. She thought that she was going to win, we thought that she was going to win. But as the results started coming in, we realized she was not going to make it. Even though I was supposed to be really fair and not really have– I wasn’t supposed to take side, I needed to remain objective. I felt sad. So after the election, I decided to go back. That was my first time in the US, I’ve seen how things were being done here. I’ve seen how journalism was being practiced here. I’ve seen the freedom people had to take pictures, to interview people, to do so many thing that we couldn’t do under a dictatorial regime in Africa. I decided maybe this is the place I should really practice journalism. I also knew that being in Washington DC, it was the right place because that’s where you have all African heads of state, all African businessmen, that’s where they come every day and that’s where I knew I would have access to them. People that couldn’t meet in Africa, people head of state, and ministers, and businessmen, and religious leaders that I couldn’t have access to in Africa. I’ve had access to them here because when they come here, they don’t have all the security men around them. They are more accessible. So I realized Washington DC was a great place for me to set up an African newspaper and have access to all these resources, all the libraries, all the people that come in. There was also a huge African population there. So I moved to the US to do my business so that’s what I’ve been doing since I came back in April 2017. On 17th of April this year, it’s going to be exactly one year since I moved here.

Liam: That is so impressive and so powerful and very moving in many different ways, Simon. And to be perfectly honest with you, I’m struggling to not just dive completely into all of that because it’s so incredibly interesting and very, very different than what we’ve heard before on our show. Absolutely thrilled that you’re joining us today. Let me try to steer it a little bit of the way into some of the questions that we like to ask our guests and to ask you to define success. What is success to you in a personal and professional way? What’s your definition of success?

Simon: I think success to me is to be able to do some of the things that I’ve been able to do, go from being an ordinary journalist, writing articles but being unable to understand WordPress and decide, you know, maybe I can learn this thing. And the ability to have learned WordPress, to design website, to know how to fix bugs, to be able to add any plugin, to be able to do every single thing that I want to do on my website. How do I post articles, how do I post pictures, how do I use videos? The ability for me to do it and to now teach other people to be able to tell other people, “These are the things that we should do. You need to be careful about the plugin, these are the essential plugins that you need to have. This is how you design your website, this is where you can go to buy a theme.” Being able to do all those things and being able to build something from scratch and moving from Africa and being in Washington DC and joining other people who were already expert in WordPress and learning from them and seeing how every day I kept improving and to me, that’s what success looks like.

Liam: Yeah, that’s a great success definition. That ability to learn and to share, you certainly in the span of this conversation have talked about learning English and learning not just to speak but to write to the point where you’re getting Ford Foundation grants on the back of writing that. I’m guessing that French, you might have grown up speaking it, but you probably speak other languages as well coming from Cameroon. Perhaps you eve write other languages as well. But then to go on and study advertising, and to learn journalism and then not just to stay as an academic journalist, if I can put it that way, to becoming a working, practicing journalist with the very scary stories of being arrested and to be simple about it, all the challenges that come with that. What a wonderfully positive definition of success. Let me ask you this. Again, trying to keep with our show a little bit is, to continually achieve the success that you have, what’s the single most important thing you do every day?

Simon: I think two things. The first thing is that I keep doing the same thing. I have this schedule, I almost sleep on my website, I wake up with my website. There are breaking news that come from Africa because of the time difference. Usually, I wake up around 4:00 AM our time but it’s already 10:00 AM in Nigeria, West African time. I scroll to my email to see if I received a statement from a government agency, from one of my reporters. I try to post them. First thing is I keep doing the same thing. The second thing is I read a lot because I came to realize that you can’t be a leader if you’re not a reader.

Liam: Oh, I like that.

Simon: Yeah, if you want to be a leader, you need to be a reader. So I read a lot. I don’t finish them, that’s maybe one of the challenges that I have. I read one book and then I see another book, and then I move to the second book but I read something every day. I also pray a lot, I have this small group in church. I go to the District Church in Washington DC. Great church, great people. We meet every Mondays and every Sunday. Being with those people and being able to go through my Bible and also doing the work every day. I keep doing the same thing every day, I keep reading every day. Those are the three things that have kept me. I keep practicing also because I’ve realized in WordPress, there are new things that happen every day. There are new plugins that come into the market every day, there are new ways of fixing bugs every day, there are new ways of posting videos. One of the ways that also makes me to keep being ahead of many people, especially where I come from is because I try to ‘cheat’. I will go to Huffington Post, I will see how they do it. I will say, “How do they do this?” I will go to Washington Post, I will see how they do it. I just saw breaking news on NPR and when they published a new story, they share it on Facebook, I see breaking news that appears on Facebook. I don’t know how to do it. I’ve seen it a week ago in The New York Times. I try to see how these newspapers, these digital newspapers look like. And I try to imitate them, I try to cheat, I try to learn, I watch a lot of YouTube videos. I mean, as I said, I have so many videos that I watch every day. When I can’t do it, I try to read on Google and then I watch video and try to see how I can fix it.

Liam: Yeah, that approach to learning, you’re calling it cheating and it’s in air quotes. And I get that and I’m smiling as I say this, but that’s the very nature of learning, right? That’s what books are. We’re cheating by studying the words of the masters that came before us and that’s what going to classes– we can figure it all on our own or we can sit in the room and take notes while somebody who knows it tells us that. I love that work that you’re doing to constantly learn by exercising your mind and your brain on a number of different levels, the practical of growing your business and your newspaper, but also the spiritual through church, and the mental through reading. You are living what you are trying to achieve and that’s great.

Tara: Yeah, what you achieved is pretty amazing. It’s interesting, we are a WordPress-focused show but there’s so much here to talk about. But I will talk about WordPress and one thing that we’ve heard from all of our guests is the role that WordPress has played in their life and in their– maybe not in their success necessarily, but in how they make a living. It seems like WordPress, I know you’ve embraced it and it’s helped your website operate and function the way that it does. It’s also, I think, something that you become master in so that you can help others as you said and do some work in WordPress. Talk a little bit about what your plans are with your website as well as with what you want to be doing with WordPress on the side or how those two things work together. Certainly, it’s staying on top of what’s new which is great.

Simon: the first thing is that I couldn’t have achieved any of this without WordPress. My website is built on WordPress, Todaynewsafrica.com. Everything I do on it, even when I’m trying to learn, everything is WordPress from the way I build it to the way I manage it every day. As I said, I watch a lot of YouTube videos and try to see how other people do it. I intend to have the most popular and the most professional WordPress website that focuses on African news. You know, I cover the State Department, the Pentagon, and different government agencies here. Often times when I attend these things, I’m the only African in the room. Most times, I’m the only black person and with this African accent that people find hard to really understand. Sometimes they’re talking about Africa and I’m the only African in the room. And there are, like, 150 journalists and there’s no one from Africa except me. So I’m trying to build something that will be really good representation for Africa, being able to ask the right question and give the right answer. I want my website to be a place where people can find answers, where people can come with questions and to find answers because at the end of the day, that’s the main thing. If you build a website that doesn’t answer any questions– if it’s my platform a place where people can come, sink in knowledge, where people can come trying to get value, trying to get answers to their question. If someone asks me for instance, “When is the Nigerian presidential election?” They should be able to come to my website and know, “Yeah, it’s going to take place in February 2019.” And, “How is a Nigerian president elected?”, “Yeah, he needs to have 50% of the vote.” I’m trying to do this platform that we give people answers about Africa. In a nutshell, that’s the platform I’m trying to build. I want it to grow and I want it to be recognized and I want it to really provide, as I said, answers to people who come with questions.

Tara: And you have reporters back in Nigeria that work with you or do you go back and forth at all?

Simon: Yes, I have people who work for me. I have one reporter who is here in the US, he lives in Maryland. I have a few reporters in Nigeria, in Cameroon, in Ghana, and someone in Kenya. I have a few freelancers who are no regular but from time to time they say, “Hey, we can do an article on this.” But one good thing that I’ve done to be able to pull all this through was to really connect to government agencies, Amnesty International, human rights. making sure I know when the issue statement by human rights abusers. Also, to be connected to all the government agency. If the government of Cameroon or Nigeria leaves a statement today, I should be able to receive it at the same time The New York Times, or CNN, or NPR are receiving it. A statement is a statement, so it is what you make of it. I’ve been able to build that platform and I have all these statements that come from all over the world and I have these reporters who send their articles. Sometimes I need to rewrite them because most people don’t really understand how you write to an international audience. There are people who don’t know where Africa is, they don’t know how many countries there are in Africa. They don’t even know where Cameroon is, where Nigeria is. So when you are writing for them, you need to be able to give them perspective so they can make sense of what you are telling them. “What is Boko Haram? Is he a person, is he a terrorist organization? Is it a country?” When they send those in I will write them.

Tara: It’s amazing what a newsroom has become and where it can be located. I mean, really when you think about all the time. Simon, something else we like to ask our guest is about advice. I’m sure in all of your experience you probably have received and given a lot of advice. Would you share with us the single most important piece of advice that you’ve received and implemented in your life?

Simon: I think here in the US, I don’t know if I’m well-placed to give advice but I’ve seen the generosity of people. When I go to YouTube and I see people who release knowledge for free, I see and realize that everything is almost out there. You can become any single thing that you want to be now if you have YouTube, if you have books, if you have Google, if you are willing to access those things who can become anything because there are a lot of people who are ready to give knowledge and who are putting knowledge out there. All you need to do is to access it. I will tell people, “I don’t know, maybe you should just study website and write about your life or something. If you don’t know how to do it, go on YouTube, go on Google, go on any others, encyclopedia, they will teach you how to do stuff. That is the single most– biggest thing that I’ve learned here in the US, the generosity of the people, the fact that people give knowledge for free. Someone just wakes up and says, “Okay, today I’m going to teach you how to build a WordPress website and to do it from scratch.” And another person will say, “I will teach you how to make a website fast.” And another person will say, “I will teach you how to iron your clothes, how to cook this, how to do this.” All those things like that, and these people are giving all these things for free. I will just tell everyone, go on YouTube, go on Google, go on Quora, go on all those platforms and access the knowledge that is already there.

Tara: That’s great advice, thank you for sharing that.

Simon: You’re welcome.

Liam: Simon, we’ve got just a couple of minutes left and I wonder if you could share a little bit about your involvement with the WordPress community. We were chatting before we started to record our show here that you’re active with your local meetup there in DC and in Northern Virginia. Tell us a little bit about how you found that and what you make of it and how are you involved?

Simon: Yeah. There was this strange thing that happened to me. I was trying to post this story one day, I never knew anything about the meetup in Allington, beautiful place. I was trying to post this story on my dashboard and I saw it and I saw that there’s a WordPress meetup. I had so many questions and I decided to join them the next time and I got there and I saw all these people. The first day I go there to the WordPress meetup in Allington. I met someone who showed me how to reduce the size of my picture and made my website fast. Because he solved the biggest problem that I had and I decided to go there every day and I began to volunteer. I met different people there. Tara who made a presentation, different people who taught us about plugins, how to monetize your WordPress site, how to expand it, how to be careful about the plugins which you use. So yeah, I learned a lot and I may volunteer. I’m going to be there tomorrow Wednesday just to volunteer and try to learn from people and share knowledge.

Liam: That is awesome, I love that. So you found it in the WordPress dashboard and said, “I’m going to find out more and learn.” I absolutely love it, I absolutely love it.

Tara: We’re lucky in Arlington that you found it. Simon, thank you so much for sharing your story. I wish we had a lot more time there, so many more things to talk about your experience and journalism and what’s happening in the world but we’ll have to save that for a meetup, you and I. Thank you very much. Can you tell everyone where they can find you online?

Simon: People can come to my website first, Todaynewsafrica.com, they can also follow me on Twitter at @simonateba. They can also maybe send us an email, contact us at Todaynewsafrica.com.

Tara: Great.

Liam: Simon, thank you so much for joining us. It was an absolute pleasure having you on this show. My only regret is that we only had half an hour. I feel like we could have been there for half the day or half the week and maybe even half the year chatting. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Simon: Thank you, Liam. Thank you, Tara. Thank you for having me.

Tara: Thanks, bye-bye.

Liam: Bye.

Tara: If you like what we’re doing here – meeting new people in our WordPress community – we invite you to tell others about it. We’re on iTunes and at hallwaychats-staging.ulpgsyz6-liquidwebsites.com.

Liam: Better yet, ask your WordPress friends and colleagues to join us on the show. Encourage them to complete the “Be on the show” form on our site, to tell us about themselves.

Tara: If you like what we’re doing here – meeting new people in our WordPress community – we invite you to tell others about it. We’re on iTunes and at hallwaychats-staging.ulpgsyz6-liquidwebsites.com.

Liam: Better yet, ask your WordPress friends and colleagues to join us on the show. Encourage them to complete the “Be on the show” form on our site, to tell us about themselves.

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