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Agencies and Departments under the Information Ministry, have been asked to be more creative – think outside the box, in order to remain relevant and survive the intense competition in the media landscape.

         Mr. Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, the Deputy Minister of Information, said it could not be business as usual in the face of the current realities.

        The dawn of social media, media pluralism and modern communication technology demanded that they changed their ways of doing things.

       He said it was pertinent for agencies and departments like the Ghana News Agency (GNA), Information Services Department (ISD) and the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) to sit up.

      Their creativity, he added, must be extended to the generation of revenue to sustain their operations.

      With the limited resources from the government to finance their operations, they needed to focus priority on generating revenue internally to supplement the subvention.

       He was interacting with management and staff of the GNA, GBC and ISD as part of his visit to the Ashanti Region.

      The joint meeting provided the platform to share ideas on the new direction of the Ministry and discuss the way forward to deal with the challenges facing the three institutions for optimal performance.

      The Deputy Minister asked management of the agencies and departments to come out with new ideas on how to commercialize some aspects of their operations.

      This, he said, was the path to travel to stay in business and efficiently discharge their mandate.

       Mr. Oppong-Nkrumah indicated that, although the advent of the new media and modern technologies in the media landscape had come with challenges, there were also opportunities, which they needed to grab to stay ahead of the competition.

       He noted that the GNA, for example, had become an “endangered species” given the fierce competition from the social media – online portals in the timeous dissemination of news.

       He said it was pertinent for the Agency – the national wires service, to do more to regain its dominance and relevance.