Extra, Extra, read all about it!

Eric, he of the inquiring mind, asks good questions. “Give me some details about the New Vision, the scale of the paper,” he writes. “I have a feeling it is somewhere between the Bainbridge Review and the Seattle Times. I’ve read that illiteracy is less of a problem than it used to be, but is still a big problem there. Also that nobody can afford to buy a paper, so whole villages will pass a single paper around. And you guys mentioned that mail service is kind of nonexistent. So how do you distribute the paper (piled high on bicycles, right?)? Is it mostly subscriptions or newsstand/kiosk sales?”

Well! I’ll try to keep it blog-brief. With a circulation somewhere around 35,000, I guess you could say the New Vision is somewhere between those two papers. But the numbers don’t mean as much here because, as you note, papers get passed around a LOT. So much so, that when you buy them in the grocery store, all the papers are stapled shut – because so many people were just hanging around the newrack all morning reading but not buying. The number is also a bit deceptive because New Vision also publishes a sister daily, Bukedde (meaning “dawn”) in Luganda, the primary native language of the region around Kampala. Bukedde, which has its own staff and nearly all original content, circulates to another 18,000 people – very little overlap – and according to their marketing research, 18 people read every copy. You do the math, but it makes the number more respectable. And yes, economics plays a big part in why people wait for a passalong copy. The daily papers cost 1,000 Ugandan shillings. That’s a little more than 50 cents. Or, looking at it another way, it’s the same amount the people earn for a full day’s work chipping away by hand at rocks under the very hot Ugandan sun in the stone quarry behind the Acholi quarter where Theresa sometimes goes with her bead project.

Back to New Vision. In addition to Bukedde and the daily/Sunday New Vision, the company publishes three weeklies in rural areas of Uganda, each reported and written in a different language that even most of the people who work in headquarters don’t understand. Plus they publish three or four entertainment/sports-types special publications, and various one-shot projects. So it’s a pretty big operation, with their own presses and an editorial staff I think around 200. (Whose total salary probably equals roughly that of one high-profile American sports columnist, but that’s another story.)

Bingo: you’re right, Eric. With no home mail delivery, subscriptions don’t really work here. Nearly all the sales are in places like our grocery store or out on the street – in little wooden news sheds (not quite kiosks, and just specializing in selling one of the 5 or 6 newspapers available here), or simply kids wandering around with armsful of newspapers. It is very personal! New Vision circulates all around the country, so it has to be taken out there every day on trucks. Bukedde is just Kampala. And people in the newsroom like to reminisce about the days before cell phones. In those days, news from outside Kampala had to be written up out there, then put in an envelope and in the hands of one of the matatu drivers who you HOPED would actually not only not be killed on the trip to Kampala but would also deliver the goods. Ah, those were the good old days!

It is also a bit of a mystery to everyone – people at the paper as well as at the university journalism school – why, considering that literacy is improving and the economic situation is somewhat improving, total circulation of the main papers has stayed pretty flat. Well, we’re working on that! One big clue: When you give people something they really want – like, for instance, the test scores on the big national exams, along with pictures of dozens and dozens of successful students – they buy the paper. Those editions are kept on the stands for a couple days and sell more like 60-70,000 each. Hmmmmm.

There, does that help a bit, Eric? And to everyone else: Sorry about the brief pause in the blog. We were away for the weekend to Jinja, home of the Source of the Nile, and stayed in a lovely place where our outdoor shower had a view right over the rapids of the Nile, and the many exotic birds that flock to the place (plus a small group of, and there is no other way to describe them, blue-balled monkeys; bright blue). After Jinja, I came home, and your regular blogstress stayed “upcountry,” as they call everything here that isn’t Kampala, where she is spending a few days working on another of her projects. More from her later, including, I’m sure, details of what it was like to stay in an $8/night hotel room immediately after the “luxury tented accommodations” overlooking the Nile. I think it was different.