In Ghana, a weekly childrenıs newspaper has not only managed to survive, but is growing and even diversifying its activities. In November 2003, Mark A. Kwateng put both his personal engagement and money at stake in what seemed to be a hazardous project: launching a weekly newspaper with a target audience of school children between the age of 6 and 16. This would be a great challenge anywhere in the world, and even more so in Africa where newspapers face many obstacles due to a poor advertising market, badly functioning distributions systems and low purchase power.
In February 2004, RAP 21 spoke to Kwateng about the launch of the "Kiddie Journo". Today, one and a half years later, we catch up with him to discuss how he has defied the odds to make his newspaper a success.
"Kiddie Journo" is unique in the sense that it builds its content exclusively on contributions from children. Schoolteachers serve as vendors of the eight-page newspaper, selling the publication to students in the classrooms.
Cutting costs to increase revenue
When RAP 21 interviewed Kwateng last year, "Kiddie Journo" was operating at a 20 percent loss. "Today we are breaking even. We manage to recover costs and our finances have improved a lot compared to last year. We achieved this by reducing cost. First, we cut down on the number of delivery agents and assigned permanent employees to take on more duties," says Kwateng.
"We also changed the size of "Kiddie Journo" to a smaller format. By doing that, we reduced cost from 600 cedis per copy to under 400 cedis per copy (9,100 cedis = 1US$). We also reduced the cost of printing by moving from full colour (four colours) to two colours (black and magenta)."
At the same time as "Kiddie Journo" has managed to cut costs, circulation has grown. "Our weekly circulation has increased from 11,000 to 15,000 because we got new schools on board. Today we cover 201 schools, which is more than double the schools we delivered to eighteen months ago. We are very confident that from the next academic year, beginning September 2005, we will begin to make a reasonable profit," says Kwateng.
Despite the growth, Kwateng has kept the same number of staff: "I have not employed more people. What I have done in the past year is to personally put in more hours of work and encouraged my staff to do the same. Instead of employing more people, I have increased salaries of the four employees who work with me. I think that is working out better." To motivate participating teachers to sell more issues of "Kiddie Journo" in the classroom, Kwateng has also doubled their commission.
High printing costs
As for additional new features, the newspaper recognises the dangers of doing too much too quickly. "We have not launched any supplements within "Kiddie Journo". We’re waiting until we make or get new investors who can help us acquire our own printing machines. If we stop out-sourcing printing services and acquire our own machines we can reduce our cost by a further 30 per cen"², he says.
"We spend about 3,000,000 cedis every week on printing fees alone. If we had our own printing machine we could save that money every week and even make more money by printing for other customers too. In a month we could save 12,000,000 cedis (1,300US$). A press would cost about 40,000,000 cedis (4,400 US$)."
Advertising remains a challenge. "Unfortunately our advertising situation has not changed since last year. We have sent loads of marketing proposals to potential advertisers but have not been successful yet. The only company that has been supportive is a local book company called EPP Book Services."
From 100 to 400 subscriptions in two months
The distribution system for "Kiddie Journo" has shifted to accommodate
higher volume and become more efficient. Kwateng recently set up regional
offices to handle distribution and other matters.
"Through the regional offices, my employees do regular school visits and meet with our newly created school clubs on Saturdays. They travel around the country distributing the newspaper, collecting articles from schools, working in the general office and running the newly established school clubs. We have devised a timetable for our rounds. We supply different parts of the country on different days taking into account their geographical location."
"We just started a new strategy of soliciting subscription from working parents and guardians on behalf of the children. So far we have seen the figure rise from just under 100 to 400 subscribers in two months. Our target is 4,000 subscribers by the end of the year,² says Kwateng.
"The subscription idea is in line with our long-term distribution strategy, which is to spread out our circulation to cover individual homes in addition to the schools already on our list. We plan to deliver copies of "Kiddie Journo" to our subscribers from the beginning of next year, by which time we hope we would have gone past the 4,000 target and trained new workers to do effective distribution."
Exchange programme and journalist award
As part of long-term strategy in 2004, "Kiddie Journo" had plans to launch a journalism award and an exchange programme with students from Senegal. The journalism prize went ahead, however plans for the exchange programme have been suspended.
"On the exchange programme, we realised we needed a bit of time to plan properly especially since it involved schools outside Ghana and as you can imagine there are a lot of immigration and financial issues involved. For now, the programme is on hold. What we intend to do as a first step in the exchange programme, is to have our local schools sign on to our upcoming ’Sister School Project’ which will be launched next academic year,² says Kwateng.
The Kiddie Journalist contest, however, was a success. It began with a preliminary stage where a panel nominated contributions from schools across the country. The names, pictures and the stories of the nominees were then published in Kiddie Journo, and readers asked to vote for the best story:
The winner who emerged was a 13 year-old girl. She received a scholarship for the following school term, which included payment of school fees and all schoolbooks for the term. Unfortunately we did not get any sponsors for the contest."
School clubs for budding journalists
In May 2004 "Kiddie Journo" started its school club programme. So far, the programme has 2000 members, although not all are active.
"The club members meet on Saturdays in our regional offices to work on a particular issue of "Kiddie Journo". The clubs take turns working on the newspaper. The clubs have sub groupings, such as a ’school reporters’ group, a ’cartoon/comic’ group, a ’photography’ group and a ’typesetters/design’ group. When they meet, the school reporters put final touches to their stories, the cartoon group tidy up their cartoons and comics whiles the typesetter group type the stories and design some pages,’ says Kwateng.
Members also receive journalism training in their fields of interest. "All the club members are trained over a period of 3 months (one school term) before they become active members of any sub group. For example, we train those in the photographers group to take pictures at different school activities. The clubs have their own executives who decide about their own programmes for the school term with my assistance and guidance," says Kwateng.
To read last yearıs story on "Kiddie Journo", visit: http://www.rap21.org/article17916.html