MEDIA-TRINIDAD & TOBAGO: Paper Started by Journalists Folds

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Peter Richards

PORT OF SPAIN, Apr 5 2001 (IPS) - Five years after it was established by unemployed journalists, the weekly ‘Independent’ newspaper has folded, a victim of weak advertising among other problems.

“The lack of a strong advertising market for weekly publications has meant a continuing drain on resources despite several attempts to restructure operations. This has shown no signs of abating,” the paper said in a front-page editorial on Wednesday, entitled ‘Independent Says Goodbye’.

President of the Media Association of Trinidad and Tobago (MATT) Dale Enoch said the closure of the paper was “unfortunate and regrettable … We need to look at what that means to the industry including its impact”.

While some founding members have sought to downplay any political reason for the demise of the newspaper, they have nonetheless acknowledged that the political environment in which the paper was born may have given the impression that it was “anti-government”.

Since its establishment in 1996, the paper has become famous for its investigations of government projects including the controversial multi-million dollar airport rehabilitation programme. Within a few months after hitting the streets, the paper joined with another weekly to file Constitutional Motions claiming their rights to freedom of the press under the Constitution had been infringed.

This move followed a decision by a High Court Judge in 1996, to restrict reporting on the murder trial of nine men. The Constitutional motions are still before the courts.

The ‘Independent’ was born after senior journalists and management officials at the Trinidad Guardian, one of the country’s most influential dailies, walked out of their jobs over a row with Prime Minister Basdeo Panday.

Panday had been critical of the Guardian over an editorial entitled ‘Chutney Rising’ that sought to comment on the rise of Indian music in the country. Enraged over what he considered racial overtones in the editorial, Panday, an Indo-Trinidadian who had just taken office, told Guardian reporters that he was cutting off their access to the office of the prime minister.

He also openly called on the owners of the newspaper to dismiss its Editor-in-Chief Jones P. Madeira.

The controversy between the paper, owned by the conglomerate ANSA McAL, and the Panday administration resulted in a member of the paper’s board of directors taking an active role in the selection of articles to be published.

Even though it took the intervention of three Caribbean media houses to help bring about an end to the issue, there was still the government’s desire to regulate the press “consistent with regulations in other democratic states”.

“I will never forget that period in our history, people sacrificed a lot, but they have grown, they have become better people today, they have taught several people a lot of lessons about professionalism and to believe in principles,” says Madeira, who was the Independent’s news editor for the first two years.

When it first hit the streets, the Independent proclaimed its independence from any sector, conceding though that “journalists are almost always idealists”.

“As a nation we have, for the moment, and for as long as we guard it, the freedom of choice. We do not have to accept what is thrust upon us. We are big men and women. We are independent. And together, we all are the Independent,” the paper added.

“The Chinese say that the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step and we believe that, once we have left childhood behind, the first step to happiness must be independence,” it added.

Madeira, who has since joined the Caribbean Epidemiology Centre as its communications specialist, recalled that the first issue of the paper was produced in a small office, a stone’s throw away from the Trinidad Guardian. The paper, he says was produced on a single computer owned by one of the journalists.

“We had people lying on the floor, waiting to use the computer to put in their stories and then the sub-editor would come around and plan the pages,” he said.

But despite its ideals, the Independent knew it was going to be difficult to sustain itself in the crowded media market of Trinidad and Tobago. Although Trinidad has only 1.2 million people, the country supports three television stations, three daily newspapers and three weeklies and 12 radio stations. In any one week at least 1.2 million locally produced papers are purchased and 77,000 foreign newspapers are consumed.

In addition, the paper’s founding members were split among those who wanted it to remain a weekly and those who saw it as a daily competing head on with the three established daily newspapers in the country.

Madeira says though circulation had increased – at one stage it was 20,000 – the advertising dollar failed to materalise even though the editorial content was “quite strong”.

“A lot of the major stories in this country were broken by the Independent. Its investigative team was very good,” he said, adding “We always had a problem in marketing the paper properly”.

The low advertising returns meant that the paper was forced to sell shares to the local insurance giant, CL Financial, already a major player in the media environment.

In August 1998, another media conglomerate, Caribbean Communications Network (CCN) that owns one of the three television stations here and publishes the Daily and Sunday Express newspapers, bought out the financially strapped Independent for an undisclosed sum. CL Financial is the largest shareholder of CCN, with 25 percent share holding.

But in announcing the closure of the paper, CCN said that while it was absorbing the staff into its other publications, “we have struggled to attain our financial objectives and to ensure the continued viability of the newspaper”.

CCN chief executive officer Craig Reynald has left open the possibility of the paper being published again in the future.

“I’d like to think that the Independent is in cold storage to be restored one day,” he said, thanking the paper’s 14,000 subscribers.