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Other articles in the RAP 21 Newsletter n° 57/2002:
Newsletter n° 57
THE BUSINESS OF NEWSPAPERS MEDIA CONVERGENCE

Malian and Senegalese newspapers collaborate on many levels

The Malian daily L’Essor, and its Senegalese counterpart Le Soleil, recently made official a fruitful collaboration which has been going on for some years already. The two newspapers exchange both material and personnel, thus creating more versatile reporting.

"One could say that it all started at the journalism school of Dakar in Senegal. A lot of people from the West African sub-region go there to study, including people from Mali. The close ties between the students have led to close ties between the two newspapers: a lot of Malian journalists have for example worked for Le Soleil," says Gaoussou Drabo, publication director of L’Essor.

What started as a small-scale, informal exchange of information between the two papers, has grown into a much more important exchange of articles and other materials like photographs and infographics. At the end of January the collaboration became official through a twinning convention.

"Still, we do not wish to start publishing special pages on Senegal in l’Essor, or vice versa. That would be too institutionalised," says Drabo.

The collaboration rather happens on an occasional basis, when there is a need and a reason for it. A typical situation is a news event in Mali which is of Senegalese interest, but Le Soleil does not have the means to send its own reporter to cover the event. Then the journalist from L’Essor covering the event will write a piece for Le Soleil as well.

Another situation is when there is a common subject, being treated differently, in the two countries. "A typical example of this is the regularisation of the Christian marriage, which is quite a different thing in the two countries. Through the exchange of articles, the coverage has been more versatile in both papers," says Drabo.

Versatility is one of the main advantages of the exchange. "I believe it serves a general interest to show another reality, to show how things are done elsewhere. It helps break the barriers of prejudices and enriches the readers’ perspectives."

Besides the ideological aspect, there is also the very practical one of attracting readers. "There is a strong Senegalese community here in Bamako, and when we are writing about issues that are of concern for them, they are more likely to buy the newspaper," says Drabo, but points out that even though it is possible to multiply the content of the paper with news from Senegal, it should not be an end in itself. On the contrary, it has to be justified and in the interest of the readers.

Most of the news exchanged between the two papers are social features and ordinary news items. The Malian journalists who have studied in Senegal know which subjects are of interest for the Senegalese readers. Political news, however, is rarely exchanged.

"Since L’Essor is governmentally owned, there are limits to what we can write about politics. But when it comes to social issues, we have a great freedom, there are no taboos. The same goes for Le Soleil. Furthermore we both tend to treat social issues in the same way."

The twinning convention also anticipates promotion and distribution of the respective newspapers in the neighbouring country, as well as an exchange of technical know-how.

In a close future Le Soleil will send a journalist to L’Essor to teach the staff how to develop the newspaper’s online version. "The website of Le Soleil is much more advanced than ours, and through sending this journalist to help us with our site, it will give us a short cut when developing the online version of L’Essor," says Drabo.

L’Essor in its turn will try to find out what kind of possibilities it has to distribute Le Soleil to interested people in Mali. Drabo denies that this might create a concurrence between the two papers, claiming they both have their own specific role to play on the newspaper market.

Another positive aspect of the collaboration between L’Essor and Le Soleil might be increased advertising. "A Senegalese businessman recently contacted us, saying that he found the idea of collaborating so good that he was going to buy a full page advertisement in both newspapers. So it might be good from that point too!"

For newspapers who are interested in beginning a similar collaboration with a newspaper in another country, Drabo says that knowing your partner "physically" is of greater importance than one might believe.

"We recently had a trainee from Switzerland who worked at l’Essor for some time. Now she has gone back in Switzerland, we have been getting offers of collaboration thanks to our contact with her. This kind of collaboration is of very particular interest for the people involved, and also requires a special engagement."
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