A newspaper toolkit for developing countries

One of those flurries of work travel (Estonia, Qatar) on top of recent trips to Africa, has convinced me of a need that we at Shakeup would be keen to supply. Can anyone think of way to publicise it … and possibly to fund it from aid money or development grants so that it could be a free service to publishers?

Working on newspapers in developing countries is inspiring because they are generally delivering a demonstrable benefit to society: spreading information and exposing corruption in places where there’s a massive need and where there are no alternative independent mass communications (broadband, patchy; TV, a government mouthpiece; radio, light entertainment).

Often these papers are founded by courageous individuals (such as Hans Luik in Estonia or Charles ‘Mase’ Onyango-Obbo in Uganda) who subsequently become powers in the land but are not (and never especially wanted to be) expert newspaper publishers. Hostile governments and nervous advertisers add to their financial pressures. Insecurity makes it difficult to retain skills and develop staff. The newspaper suffers. The public are let down.

Like doctors visiting field hospitals where bad practices are needlessly putting patients’ lives at risk, we visit newspapers where rivers of scarce cash are wasted on needless faffing around and where there is next to no idea about how to organise a newsroom, commission, edit and design a good newspaper or market a title to its natural readership.

This hurts. It hurts because newspapers always matter and they matter especially in developing countries. And it would be relatively easy (or at least not impossible) to double some of these papers’ efficiency and double their quality at the same time, creating a better media and a secure independent sector.

So here’s the idea:  a publisher’s toolkit, like an IKEA house, with everything you need in one box to run a clever, modern, successful newspaper. We’d give them basic, good design; decent fonts; work-flow management systems; the latest indesign software; newsroom layouts; production plans; marketing rules and a daily editorial schedule. One from a pool of senior editors and publishers would be on hand to help install the toolkit — which could be a complete or partial replacement of an existing operation.  And once installed, it would be adapted and individualised of course to fit the special requirements of the title in question. 

In my conception, this would be a free service for anyone in a developing country who was running an independent newspaper that was doing its best to tell the truth.

2 comments February 24th, 2009