📖 ABSTRACT/OVERVIEW
This study assesses the editorial standards and language quality of selected Nigerian online news portals, examining the extent to which the speed-driven and resource-constrained production environment of digital journalism in Nigeria affects the grammatical accuracy, register consistency, and adherence to journalistic style conventions in published news content. The growth of online news consumption in Nigeria has been accompanied by the proliferation of news portals whose content quality varies dramatically, raising professional concerns about the standards of written English in mass-distributed digital journalism. The study compiles a corpus of 300 news articles from ten prominent Nigerian online news portals, including Sahara Reporters, The Cable, Premium Times, and Vanguard Digital, collected over a four-week period in 2023. A systematic language quality assessment applies a rubric covering grammatical accuracy, punctuation and mechanics, sentence construction, headline language, and stylistic register. Qualitative analysis examines headline sensationalism, anglophone style guide compliance, and the influence of social media register on formal news writing. Findings reveal significant variability across portals, with a negative correlation between publication frequency and grammatical accuracy, suggesting that editorial quality is compromised under production speed pressure. Specific recurring error types are identified, including subject-verb agreement with collective nouns, tense inconsistency in reported speech, and the carryover of social media informal register into news reports. Recommendations include the establishment of a Nigerian online journalism style guide and mandatory copy-editing standards for portals seeking accreditation. Keywords: editorial standards, online journalism, Nigerian English, language quality, digital news.
Need Complete Chapters of the Above Topic?
Get high-quality, Zero-AI research materials with current citations.
Request via WhatsApp 💬