Honour without profit

PNG’s straggling little’ papers: Honour without profit

Perhaps it was the sense of isolation among scattered expatriate communities. Perhaps it was sheer boredom. Whatever the reason, over the years Papua New Guinea has been a fertile breeding ground for a proliferation of tiny newspapers. Keith Jackson, who writes from Port Moresby, presided over one of them, the Kundiawa News. The News (printing 250 in a truly boom week) subsided in 1966 after three tumultuous years of part-time publication. “Weep not for us,” Jackson eulogised to his 'eaders at the time, “for we never wept for you.”

ITHEN I rang, late on a Monday evening, Father Mihalic was in the throes of writing the editorial >r issue number 121. July marked the fifth anniversary f the founding of Wontok, PNG’s longest-surviving ttle newspaper.

“Little” is perhaps too harsh a word for a pub cation with a circulation of 10,000 (800 outside PNG) id which runs to three separate editions. What is minutive is revenue. Mihalic says Wantok “just about •eaks even, depending on luck with advertising”. The iper lost about $2,000 last year, the tab being picked i by overseas donors.

Wantok (Pidgin for “friend”) is owned by the oman Catholic bishops of PNG. It has the dual stinction of being the only newspaper in PNG to )pear wholly in Pidgin and to be a success with aders (if not with advertisers) while retaining a strong velopment orientation in its news pages.

We aim at the little man who has made good, ose of high-school age, drop-out people,” says Father ihahc. He denies that Wantok is a Roman Catholic wspaper: “We’re ecumenical”.

Editorial policy is cautious. Wantok’s political verage is straight and devoid of comment. “We’ve • particular slant,” Mihalic says, “we present a lanced view.”

He d like to see Wantok develop as more of a ws magazine “like Time or The Bulletin”. But first ; paper must be popularised. Already separate edi- Bs are brought out for the Sepik and the Highlands, malic considers that a development of this concept ght create a breakthrough for Wantok’s circulation.

P a P ua New Guineans are very parochial,” he fs, “ a nd local editions create interest.” Separate edi ns are being planned for Rabaul, Port Moresby, Lae indiawa and Wabag. The staff of 10 is also gearing for weekly rather than fortnightly production.

Throughout PNG, Wantok has become an accepted d quoted standard for Pidgin English spelling. This not really surprising as Mihalic himself is the cnowledged authority on the language. About half , f NG population speak Pidgin. It’s easily the most lely-spoken language, with more than 800,000 :akers 10 years and over. Wantok is clearly in a •wth market.

But two problems need to be solved. The first these is distribution—in a country where communi ions, if they exist, are costly. The second, in the rds of Father Mihalic, is that there is “no reading )it in Papua New Guinea”.

T'HE genealogy of the Lae Nius is like that of some A obscure European royal family. Somewhere in the murk of the past are a myriad of relatives. The grand pappy of ’em all was the Times Courier, which disap peared soon after the Melbourne Herald group moved into PNG publishing. There followed a swarm of minor publications—some titled evocatively (Lae Trading Post), some pompously (Lae City News).

Out of all this, in September last year, emerged the Lae Nius, the proprietors of which (PNG Printmg) say is going to stick around. Connections are cagey aout how the Nius is going financially, but it's reliably be lieved to be breaking even. Advertising has picked up in the last three months and in mid-July, for the first time, the paper hit 32 pages.

From its first anniversary issue, during PNG’s Inde pendence celebrations, the Nius will roll off the presses twice weekly. Managing editor, Paul Cox, and his small staff of five are finding a receptive market.

Readership is unknown but circulation is 5,000 and growing.

Managing director of PNG Printing, Ray Thurecht, says that the first responsibility of the Nius is to be parochial. So parochial, indeed, that there’s not even a rate for subscriptions! “We’ve no intention of going national,” Thurecht says. Rather, the strategy appears to be to establish similar locally-orientated publications in other towns.

Thurecht claims that Lae Nius is interested in “penetration rather than circulation” and infers that he’d prefer a good little paper rather than a bad big one. The Nius is aiming for a middle of the road reader ship. Editorial policy, Thurecht says, is “conservative”.

“We don’t feel we’re here to be vindictive. If the government does its best, we’ll support it. But we have responsibilities.” The Nius remains politically neutral but not uncritical.

The biggest problem in the paper’s first year has been in building up advertising. Thurecht is con vinced that many advertisers refused to commit them selves for half a year or more while they assessed the performance of the Nius. Now local advertisers are voting with their cheque books. Curiously perhaps national advertisers remain reluctant.

Lae Nius is still a little newspaper, still battling.

Ray Thurecht has an ideal though. “Someone has got a responsibility to produce a professional newspaper.”