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| Newsletter n°9 |
08.03.2007 |
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| The Business of Newspapers
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| Uganda: New Vision Promotion Pushes Sales Through the Roof |
In July 2005, Uganda’s leading newspaper publisher, the New Vision group, launched the Super Sales Booster, a promotional campaign aimed at the paper’s sales agents, which offered prizes ranging from cash to new motorbikes. This promotion sought to increase sales, decrease the rate of returns and combat the problem of newspaper renting. The initiative was a phenomenal success; more than 200 sales agents participated in the year-long campaign, and the newspaper group boosted revenues significantly for all of its six titles. RAP 21 spoke to Tom Wasswa, circulation manager for the group about the promotion.
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| NEWS FROM THE MEDIA SCENE
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| South Africa’s FXI Launches Legal Aid Clinic |
On 23 August, South Africa’s Freedom of Expression Institute (FXI) launched a legal aid clinic; the first of it’s kind in South Africa. The clinic aims to provide all victims of censorship in South Africa, and in particular members of the country’s poorer communities, with free legal counselling, and to tackle “precedent-setting freedom of expression cases”.
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| PRESS FREEDOM
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| Government of Niger Continues to Detain Journalists |
The government of Niger is continuing to detain Mamane Abou and Oumarou Keita, respectively the managing editor and editor of the daily “Le Republicain. The two men, who were arrested on 4 August, have been accused of publishing false information and defaming the state of Niger. They each face an 18-month prison term and a fine of 70,000 CFA Francs (110 Euros) if found guilty.
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| Latest Press Freedom News from the Continent |
In Burkina Faso, an appeals court in Ouagadougou upheld, on August 16, investigative Judge Wenceslas Ilboudou’s decision to drop all charges in the case of murdered journalist Norbert Zongo. On 19 July, Judge Ilboudo had dismissed all charges against Marcel Kafando, a member of the Presidential Security Battalion (BSP), after a crucial witness expressed doubts about elements of his previous testimony. The Ouagadougou Court of Appeal has refused to overturn this original decision, thus ignoring an appeal filed against it by members of Zongo’s family. Zongo, who was the editor of the weekly “l’Independent”, was murdered in 1998 while investigating criminal allegations against President Blaise Compaoré’s family. Kafando, who was indicted for the murder in 2001, was the main suspect in the case.
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| Morocco: Weekly Nichane Banned and Journalists Prosecuted |
The World Association of Newspapers and the World Editors Forum strongly condemn the ban imposed on the Moroccan weekly
newspaper Nichane and the legal proceedings against its publisher,
Driss Ksikes, and journalist Sanaa Elaji.
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| Tunisia: Freedom of Expression Still Under Siege |
More than one year after it hosted the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), the government of Tunisia has failed to address human rights and freedom of expression concerns, the Tunisia Monitoring Group of the
International Freedom of Expression Exchange said. The Group, which includes the World Association of Newspapers, appealed to incoming United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to remind the government of Tunisia of its international obligations.
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| Tunisia: New Breaches of the Right to Freedom of Expression |
WAN and the IFEX Tunisia Monitoring Group express their serious concern that Tunisian authorities arbitrarily ordered Dar Assabah not to issue its new weekly magazine L’Expression and banned the French magazine Historia Thématique. These are the latest acts in a campaign of state harassment of the media, a campaign that includes censoring publications and jailing journalists, the coalition of 16 press freedom and freedom of expression organisations said.
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| New Media Expands Press Freedom |
Neil Budde, the General Manager of Yahoo!, Oh Yeon-Ho, the founder of the Ohmynews online newspaper, and a wide range of new media and press freedom advocates have joined the programme of "New Media: The Press Freedom Dimension," to be held in Paris next week.
The conference, to be held on 15 and 16 February at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), will examine the challenges and opportunities of new media for press freedom.
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| TOOLS
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| Trauma Self-Help Website for Media Staff |
This week a new self-assessment website launches providing journalists and those who work them with a confidential tool to help them determine if they are suffering the effects of post traumatic stress.
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| Tunisia: Abbou Begins Third Year In Prison |
The World Association of Newspapers has joined an international day of action calling for the release of Mohamed Abbou, a Tunisian lawyer and human rights activist, jailed for having exercised his freedom of expression.
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| Global Enquiry Into Journalist Killings Published |
The International News Safety Institute (INSI) presents the dramatic results of the world’s most comprehensive inquiry into the deaths of journalists over the last decade in a report called Killing The Messenger: The Deadly Price of News.
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| AWARDS OPPORTUNITIES
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| Join 2007 Kurt Schork Awards |
Print journalists covering local stories in developing countries and freelancers specialized in foreign reporting have until 15 June 2007 to enter the Kurt Schork Awards in International Journalism. The submissions can focus on conflict, human-rights concerns, cross-border issues, or any other issue of controversy. The stories must have been published between 1 March 2006 and 30 April 2007.
The contest, which is co-organised by IWPR, the international non-profit media development network, and the Kurt Schork Memorial Fund, celebrates the memory of the American freelance reporter killed in an ambush while on assignment for Reuters in Sierra Leone in May 2000.
Two annual prizes of $5,000 each are awarded -one to an international freelance journalist covering foreign news, and the second to a local journalist in the developing world. Massoud Ansari from Pakistan and the late Steven Vincent from the US were last year’s winners.
For further details visit http://www.iwpr.net or http://www.ksmfund.org
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