FOROYAA Newspaper (Serrekunda)
Sam Sarr
30 August 2008
opinion
Any freelance reporter who goes to another paper to claim that he or she did receive his income piecemeal from Foroyaa in July has a case. It is therefore necessary for Foroyaa to publish the whole truth so that such reports would end up being a blessing in disguise.
There is no doubt that Foroyaa has been handling these problems of piecemeal payment of the reporters in the month of June and July and plagiarisation of the reports of our reporters to sell it to on line papers using anonymous names.
For the information of the reader, Foroyaa has evolved and its management has come to recognise that the paper does not entirely depend on the spirit of volunteerism for it publication as was the case at its inception. There are now a pool of personnel who are solely interested in getting their income on time even if the problems the paper is experiencing is explained to all reporters and accepted by most.
The reporters have been told that Foroyaa was not established as a commercial enterprise and that none of its founders has enriched themselves from its earnings at the expense of the reporters; on the contrary, it is those who sell printing materials, the state which collect taxes and the paid reporters who benefit materially from the publication of Foroyaa.
For example the managing editor of Foroyaa, Mr. Sam Sarr, survives by giving evening classes in physics and mathematics and selling his books on mathematics. He is not paid a dime by Foroyaa. If he were to resign Foroyaa would only miss a volunteer, who cannot be replaced by anyone complaining about piecemeal payment of July salary.
The other members of the Editorial board also offer their services such as the writing of editorials and other analysis without pay. Those who write for the Marriage and family life and Focus on politics also contribute their quota without pay for the columns. Hence Foroyaa has the face of volunteerism co-existing with the face of paid labour.
The members of the editorial board are all volunteers and the legal proprietor of the paper Halifa Sallah is not a signatory to its account and has never received a share of any profit. He is a proprietor by title. In short, the Foroyaa Newspaper was established to give information and knowledge to the people in good faith in the public interest on the basis of the spirit of volunteerism.
The source for the problem
Over the past two years the number of technical personnel and freelance reporters had grown to 40. The paper has been grooming competent youths to take over the paper and continue its progressive tradition and still attain their livelihood in a decent manner. This process is going on side by side with the retention of the old guard who are still adhering to the spirit of volunteerism. Training is proceeding at a rapid pace and the following institutions can attest to this. Private English teachers have even been hired to give tutoring to typists and reporters on a one to one basis to improve competence. At the moment Foroyaa Personnel are taking courses at Quantum to improve capacity at Foroyaa's expense.
The financial situation, which brought about the piecemeal payment of dues, has been assessed and explained to all reporters.
Foroyaa receive monies from sales of the paper, subscriptions and advertisement. What comes from direct sales is what is utilised to pay for printing materials and give reporters fares to go and search for news which is not a common practice in any newspaper establishment. Income from subscriptions and advertisement go to settle the recurrent costs including the income of reporters. The monthly expenditure of Foroyaa has started to exceed the collection of what is owed to Foroyaa in terms of subscriptions and advertisements. We have therefore increased the personnel engaged in the collections of debts owed to Foroyaa in order to meet our financial obligations on time.
The editors therefore sympathise with the problems of those who receive their entitlements for July piecemeal but cannot understand the motive of those who fail to tell the whole truth by giving the impression that the situation in Foroyaa is precarious. In fact Foroyaa has a system where reporters take loans against their income and many reporters do exploit such a facility.
Hence the paper humbly accepts that because of its inability to collect its monies with those who advertised with the paper it has been experiencing cash or liquidity problem which militates against the fulfilment of some of its obligations on time. Furthermore, the cost of printing materials and the tax burden of the paper are very heavy. However, since those at the helm of Foroyaa are not enriching themselves from its earnings the integrity of the paper remains unassailable. We beg for good will and understanding from our readers especially those who owe us money. They should now be able to see the price of their delay in payment and we hope they will cooperate with our collectors to save us from more bad publicity. Online papers also ask for support from readers. We hope they would also encourage people to give support to a paper which has always committed itself to publish the truth in good faith in the public interest, a paper whose proprietor has never received a butut from its sales as his share. Such a paper deserves support.
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