When the Gabonese newspaper "Le Journal" was launched two years ago, RAP 21 reported on its efforts to become part of the Gabonese newspaper market (Newsletter No 74). Today, the newspaper has found its place among competitors and colleagues, and has also gathered many experiences on the way. RAP 21 spoke to Wilfrid Koumba, the publisher of "Le Journal", which has a circulation of 5,000 and employs 10 people in its newsroom.

"An important moment for the paper was in connection to an investigative story we did last year, following the murder of the Gabonese singer Serge Eninga. The authorities exerted strong pressure on us to stop investigating the case, but we pursued and finally published the story about how Eninga was murdered by an army official because of his involvement with a woman," says Koumba.

For him, the investigation was an important lesson for the newspaper, both in terms of press freedom and how to carry out investigative journalism.

Hard to survive without advertising Politics is one of the main subjects of this 16-page magazine, which appears once a month. However, that was not the case from the beginning: at its launch, "Le Journal" was a bi-monthly, but ten months later the paper was forced to change to being a monthly, because of a lack of advertisements.

"It is a common problem for all independent papers in Gabon. The advertisers want to avoid getting into trouble with the authorities by running ads in independent newspapers. Consequently, the lack of ads means that no independent newspapers can afford being published daily or barely even weekly. And a newspaper which is published only once a month is a lot less interesting for the advertisers. The only newspaper which actually carries ads in Gabon is the government-owned daily."

"Le Journal" depends completely on sales, which hinders the publication from developing and expanding. Several projects are still on the drawing board. One of them is the launch of the newspaper’s web site.

"We had a technical team who worked on the web site, but they did not manage to carry it through. But we haven’t given up hope about launching a web site in the future," says Koumba.

Another goal was to publish "Le Journal" in three languages: French, English and Portuguese. This has not happened yet, but last year a Spanish-language project was carried out in Equatorial Guinea.

"In two consecutive issues of the paper we published four pages in Spanish. The project was launched in connection to the presidential elections in Equatorial Guinea, and we were hoping to establish a readership in the country through this special coverage. This would have been particularly interesting since Equatorial Guinea has no newspaper of its own," says Koumba.

The project, however, fizzled out.

"People would simply not buy the paper. They were not interested. Of the 500 copies we put on sale, approximately 20 were sold. That was not enough to make it worthwhile for us to continue. Especially since there were the expenses of translating everything from French to Spanish, which was an important cost."

Not a company like others Among the current future goals of "Le Journal" is to expand to other African countries. This could be realised through the cooperation the paper has with Africa No 1, a private radio station that transmits all over the continent. Currently the paper is sold in Gabon and Cameroon, where it is also printed.

When asked what advice he would give to other people wanting to start a newspaper in Africa, Koumba says: "You need to make sure that you have sufficient funds when starting a newspaper. It is a huge project, and one that needs a lot of financial input. And one has to remember that a newspaper is not a company like others - it takes a long time to see a return on your investment.