Dear Editor

RE: the SN Editorial of May 23, 2009 headlined ‘Journalism’s Uncertain Future’ Journal-ism has already suffered grave damage. It’s not so much that it has an uncertain future, but that its present state demands urgent new thinking. The mass media in North America has already sold its soul. The British media still holds on to a journalism conscience, but in North America, that conscience is severely hardened. No wonder Wall Street can dictate to a newsroom.

Newspapers fail in a fundamental way: possibly because of the expensive infrastructure necessary for the massive web press and the newsroom, newspapers as businesses have become outdated paper and chemical consuming factories that are run by a top-heavy bureaucracy. This leaves newspapers no room for innovation. The print media thus suffers from its own lack of vision, courage and future-based thinking. And of course these lazy creatures blame everything else under the sun for their irrelevance. The Internet, TV and even radio ride the innovation wave much more successfully than newspapers. News-papers are therefore becoming a dinosaur culture. In Guyana, a newspaper looks like fish wrapping – poor design, awfully terrible writing, zero original thinking.

The solution? Simply implement an innovation strategy – encompassing how interviews are done, how the pages are designed, how the writing is done, and really re-discover the soul of newspapering: investigate society’s ills and report on them with a deep human touch. What newspapers need today is simply humane investigative writing. In Guyana, capture the essence of Bourda market; report on the ferry service at Berbice given the new bridge; how is the housing crisis being solved; what has become of the slums of Albouystown and Sophia; what’s going on at Linden’s Valley of Tears; is the Auditor general finally balancing the books with accountable state records; etc. etc.

Newspapers will survive and thrive, except those that have become too heavy, weighing down their communities with lack of vision and zero innovation and even less compassion; these will fall by the wayside. I am happy Washington refused to make newspapers non-profit institutions, because then publishers would not be accountable to the readers. Let the results of transformed communities create the mass desire for a newspaper – nothing else.

And please Newspaper Industry – stop complaining: roll up your sleeves and innovate within the 21st century’s global village. That’s the only way forward.

Yours faithfully,
Shaun Michael Samaroo
CEO
Qualped Corporation