The Trading Post experience

Mark Neil-Jones, the Australian publisher of Trading Post, explains his approach has been completely different to what has been done by other publications. When he took over Trading Post in April 1994, he started by securing advertising revenue through classified ads, which was what the paper was originally all about. He then introduced ‘social pictures’ - lots of them - showing expatriates at parties in Port Vila, a gossip page and entertainment news from around the world. With a mostly expatriate readership, Neil-Jones now claims “huge advertising support and more expatriates now read the Trading Post than the (government-run) Vanuatu Weekly" (although readers complain about the spelling mistakes).

Nonetheless, for the past three months, Neil-Jones has ven tured into incorporating local news (including political) into his publication with the help of a local journalist who once edited former Prime Minister Walter Lini’s National United Party’s Golden Press.

“We are taking a chance because no independent newspaper has ever been so successful in Vanuatu. The publisher of Tam Tam was deported under the Lini government for publishing anti-government views and last year, the bilingual paper, Vanuascope, closed through lack of advertising revenue.

“The Vanuatu Weekly still loses money and is heavily sup

ported by government funds.

“We were under strong pressure to add local news and make it into a proper newspaper, which we have done, and we have increased our circulation to 2000 very quickly.

“The government of Vanuatu has been very supportive of our efforts, despite it being an English newspaper, and we have had no interference on editorial (content). It is a very positive sign that freedom of the Press is genuinely being pursued by the Vanuatu government and we are confident the Trading Post will continue to grow and offer independent news to the gen eral public,” Neil-Jones said in a self-promoted press release in January.

But he later found things weren’t that rosy. He told PlMMt’s extremely difficult to get government news and press releases.

Because people are so used to dealing with the government

newspaper, they only send things to them.”

On a more sensitive issue, he said he was careful about what he or his staff wrote. “Our policy is not to attack the govern ment - to question it, yes, but not to attack it.

“I’m a foreigner. I can’t be seen to be supporting a party. Any accusation that I may be running an anti-government newspa per is ridiculous, it’s ludicrous.”

He reveals he sends a copy of every story he thinks has any direct relation to the government to government spokesper son and Prime Minister’s private secretary,Yvette Sam.

“To date we’ve had no negative comment from her; we have a good relationship with this government. We’re trying very hard to walk a straight line. It’s an educational process.We now have more freedom than we had before but we still don’t have enough.”

Neil-Jones feels one of his stories about the deportation of three expatriates in January had irritated some high-ranking government officials. “If the government doesn’t want me to publish local news. I’m happy not to run any more local news.

We’re only doing it because Vanuatu needs freedom of the Press.”

But it is certainly not detrimental to his newspaper’s circula tion figures either.

A top official in the Prime Minister’s office said, however, that although Trading Post enjoyed a good relationship with indi viduals in his office, “he shouldn’t look for news in the dust bins” to be “too sensational”. The same source points out Neil- Jones had been reminded the government promoted newspa pers in both French and English.

But Neil-Jones says it doesn’t make financial sense and since most of his readers are English-speaking, he stays with English.

“No newspaper in Vanuatu has ever made money running both French and English stories. The government’s Vanuatu Weekly has to carry French, English and bislama (pidgin), so two thirds of the paper is not read,” he says.

If all goes well, Neil-Jones intends to boost his Trading Post into a bi-weekly before the end of this year and to distribute it in the northern town of Luganville.