A blow to Caribbean democracy as Stabroek News and Newsday papers fold after social media shift

SAN JOSÉ, Costa Rica (AP) — Growing up in Trinidad and Tobago, Carlon Augustus remembers reading the newspapers his grandparents bought daily. Now 32, he says he turns to social media for the latest news.

For him, it’s about getting news in real time.

“Everything is on social media now. Whatever happens today, you don’t have to wait to get the papers tomorrow," he said.

Media owners point to shifting reading habits like Augustus' as the primary reason two legacy newspapers have folded in the Caribbean so far this year: Guyana’s Stabroek News and Trinidad and Tobago’s Newsday.

Newsday's closing is a ‘loss to the country, democracy’

Stabroek News printed its final edition on Sunday and halted its online publication. It was established in November 1986, a year after its founder asked Guyana’s then-president if he would accept the creation of an independent newspaper. At the time, Guyana was six years away from its first free and fair elections in nearly 30 years.

Meanwhile, Trinidad and Tobago’s Newsday stopped publishing its print and online editions in January.

“That is definitely a loss to the country, to our democracy, where particularly in this age of social media, credible professional media houses are needed more than ever,” said Judy Raymond, Newsday's former editor-in-chief.

Newspapers in the Caribbean, which have covered corruption, political upheaval, deadly natural disasters and the oddball story worthy of a short novel, have struggled to attract and retain readers — like print media worldwide — proving little competition to influencers and social media.

The closures of these two papers hit especially hard because they were independently owned, so they offered a variety of voices and were less susceptible to being influenced by advertisers or power players, said Kiran Maharaj, president and cofounder of the Media Institute of the Caribbean.

“You have now a narrowing of that,” she said.

A platform for free speech

Stabroek News became known for solid, independent journalism and set high standards emulated across the region. It drew literary giants to write its op-eds, including Guyanese poets Martin Carter and Ian McDonald, and covered the groundbreaking general election in October 1992, which ushered in democracy.

The paper also blossomed into a platform for free speech after years of authoritarian regime.

“Its letters page provided perhaps the most open and democratic public forum in Guyana,” wrote lawyer Christopher Ram in a recent essay published by the paper.

“Over time that column became something of an informal national meeting place where academics, trade unionists, political figures, public servants, businesspeople and ordinary citizens debated, as equals, matters of public importance.”

Stabroek News was considered Guyana's top newspaper. The country still has three other papers: one is state-owned and another is closely linked to the ruling party. The third one recently began asking its web visitors how willing they would be to pay to read online content.

Early Ward, a retired 76-year-old beverage company manager from Guyana, said he was depressed about the demise of Stabroek News.

“I have been reading newspapers since the 50s and prefer to have one in my hand to hold and to move around with and read anytime,” he said.

Ward now relies on TV and social media for news.

Trinidad and Tobago’s Newsday made its debut in 1993, promising to reach the most remote communities on the twin-island nation where two long-established rivals still operate: the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian and the Trinidad Express.

The paper appealed to blue-collar workers and soon became a household name as journalists scooped other news outlets on stories and lawmakers referenced its articles in Parliament.

Newsday was known for its coverage of Tobago, the smaller, less developed of the two islands, and for amplifying voices of those struggling, said Raymond, who served as editor-in-chief from 2017 to 2022.

She said one of the most fulfilling roles at the paper was helping people because “they are desperate and officialdom has not helped them and they don’t have anybody else to turn to.”

A status symbol

From the 1970s to the mid-1990s, newspapers in the Caribbean enjoyed solid financial backing and became a status symbol, said journalist Wesley Gibbings, vice president of the Jamaican-based Media Institute of the Caribbean.

“People would be seen walking with a physical copy of newspapers,” he recalled. “It was almost a prestigious thing to be the one with the newspaper.”

Then Big Tech platforms including Google began attracting advertising content and revenue while mining mainstream media content, Gibbings said.

“The danger signs have been up for a very long time,” he noted. “We are in a watershed period right now, and the crashes will continue.”

The windup of Daily News Limited, which published Newsday, was due to a “perfect storm of challenges,” said the company’s managing director, Grant Taylor, noting that print advertising fell by 75% over the last decade.

Raymond, who helped set up Newsday’s digital desk in early 2018, said perhaps Newsday “could have worked harder at broadening the revenue stream from online publications.”

In hindsight, she pondered whether transforming Newsday into a digital-only news outlet could have been a viable option. However, with Loop News, a regional online news source that closed last July, she said becoming a digital-only publication would not have guaranteed Newsday’s survival.

In the case of Stabroek News, its owners said the government paid “a mere” $7.5 million toward a debt of some $90 million owed for advertising services in the past year.

But the newspaper noted that overdue bills and a drop in government advertising are not the main reasons for its demise: “Readership patterns have changed dramatically, and fewer readers are willing to purchase printed editions — or even pay for electronic versions.”

In a recently published letter to Stabroek News, Lurlene Nestor mourned its closure, “especially during this period of Guyana’s history, where allegations of massive public corruption are rife, coupled with a situation where the nation’s important resources, such as gold and oil, appear to be either corruptly exploited or used as personal political bargaining chips."

Anand Persaud, Stabroek News' editor-in-chief, echoed those concerns, adding that he’s proud of the paper’s work.

“We leave at this stage," he said, "because we want to make sure our independence is not on the line.

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Gibbs reported from Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, and Wilkinson from Georgetown, Guyana.