FROM 1987, Stabroek News (SN) became a part of the physiology of Guyana. From 1987, post-Burnham Guyana was made of the stuff that would make any independent daily newspaper a colossal success, and SN was a huge success.
The paper did not spare President Hoyte’s government its wrath. SN probed the exercise of power since its birth in 1986, the way the Catholic Standard did before SN was born. The postponement of the 1990 general election and the pressure on Hoyte to hold free and fair elections were issues that SN vigorously and relentlessly pursued.
As the Cheddi Jagan presidency settled into power, SN still ruled the waves. People wanted to read SN, especially after post-election violence in 1997. In 1994, a rival newspaper, Kaieteur News (KN) came on the scene. But it made not even an infinitesimal dent to SN’s standing and circulation. Two reasons explain this. SN was a daily with enormous resources, and all classes in society wanted to read it.
Secondly, KN was a weekend newspaper that appealed to a tiny section of the population and appeared to people as a sleazy, sensationalist tabloid. Each week, its front page was a half-naked woman. KN appealed only to a tiny section of the nation that wanted to read about sordid things that were happening on the streets. SN then had nothing to be afraid of.
It was the post-election violence and widespread violence against Indians in 1997 that motivated KN to undergo a transformation. The paper wanted to be a daily, mainstream newspaper that, though not neglecting the sub-culture stratum it catered for, wanted to go in the direction of politics, crime, and other social occurrences.
From 1998, KN began to seriously compete with SN for circulation patronage for two reasons. The average man/woman in the street perceived SN to be a middle-class newspaper that did not cater to their interest, so KN became their favourite. Secondly, and more importantly, the nature of a newspaper determines the type of staff it employs. SN relied on stiff, lower-middle-class journalists without any deep roots in society in general.
KN, on the other hand, went for the type of journalists that had connections with the police, the hospitals, the market culture, and the rural landscape. What KN began to do is to report on mainstream happenings while preserving its original direction. The result was that the lawyers, doctors, intellectuals, business class, politicians, government officials, etc., began to seek out KN while KN still catered to its subculture genres. The result was a widening circulation for KN with the attendant widening of circulation.
The death blow for SN came with the Buxton massacres, which started with the Mash 2002 Camp Street jailbreak. KN simply had the journalistic entourage that could get information from the police, the people of Buxton, the government, the opposition, friends of the gunmen, and the extrajudicial operatives. SN simply did not have the type of journalists that had contacts with these dimensions of Guyanese society.
From 2002, if the nation and the Caribbean region wanted to know what was happening in Guyana, they read KN. They read KN because the KN scoops were coming in daily, and SN was falling behind badly. It would be no exaggeration to say KN outran SN by millions of miles in scoops about governmental behavior and the crime scene from 2002.
The Buxton massacres exposed the original birth defect of SN. It was patterned after the serious broadsheets in the US and UK. But Guyana was a different country with a small population; therefore, a newspaper in Guyana could not survive with a style like the Times of London. By the time the Buxton violence subsided in 2008, KN had significantly outperformed SN in terms of circulation and advertising.
SN looked down on KN and its staff and referred to KN as a gutter tabloid. That was unfair because while KN kept it news about a fight in the market or a fight in a mini-bus, KN still pursued stories on crime, politics, power, and wealth. The middle class and the wealthy class that read SN also read KN.
The vigorous competition KN gave SN resulted in bad blood between the two newspapers. I will close with three examples, all of which I witnessed. At a midday luncheon at the now-defunct WaterChris Restaurant, David DeCaires refused to shake the hand of KN owner Glen Lall when Lall extended his hand.
At a sports function at Sidewalk Café, when KN sports reporter Rawle Welch got up to introduce himself as representing KN, SN General Manager, Doreen DeCaires, shouted across the room, yelling out that KN was no proper newspaper. Thirdly, SN issued an editorial note accusing KN of buying information from the police. Part 4 is coming up.
DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.