For media organs to reach rural areas, new paradigm is needed

By Editor

Editorial Cartoon

It is well known that prime functions of mass media organs, the radio, newspapers, television and now the social media, are to inform, educate and entertain.

 

Most of them have been doing well in fulfilling these functions from the colonial times when there were only few papers like Tanganyika Standard, predecessor to the present day Daily News, Mwafrika and Ngurumo.

 

The latter two Kiswahili tabloids were meant to cater for local people while the English broadsheet served as the mouthpiece of the colonialists.

 

But come Uhuru on December 9, 1961, the management of these papers changed hands, and the ruling party, Tanganyika African National Union (TANU), predecessor of CCM, started The Nationalist, primarily to give prominence to news about the new nation.

 

However, what stands out as the most significant feature for all these newspapers is that they served urban dwellers. Most were sold in urban centres and hardly a few, if any, could see the light of the day in rural areas where the majority of Tanzanians live.

 

However, they could be excused for this state of affairs for a number of reasons. First is the country’s poor communication which makes it difficult, if not impossible, for daily newspapers to reach all corners of this vast land daily.

 

Some take up to a week to reach a selling point. By that time the news carried in the paper would already be stale, and thus lose the market … no reader is comfortable to read history, anyway!

 

Secondly, since the country opened up to the free market economy in the early 1990s, it also opened a pandora’s box. There has been a proliferation of newspapers to such an extent that readers cannot afford to buy all at the same time. And, given their high price, only few people can afford them.

This being the case, the suggestion by the Tanzania Media Women’s Association Coordinator, Gladness Munuo, becomes hard to be fulfilled by media houses as well as social media networks.

 

In an interview with this paper she challenged them, not only to increase the supply of newspapers to rural areas, but also that of national and international news coverage.

 

Yes, indeed, but we think this is easier said than done, the reason being that news coverage is costly. It involves getting a reporter to the scene of an event, interviewing people and/or taking their pictures, writing the story, printing and distributing the newspaper, etc, etc.

 

For a newspaper to survive, therefore, it has also to rely on advertisements which involve a lot of marketing and salesmanship to lure advertisers.

All said, the Tamwa official’s idea is good, and newspapers would be all too glad to see their products reaching the rural areas. But this depends on a lot of other things, among them improved communication to these areas, literacy of its people as well as improved standards of living.

 

For it will be foolhardy for the family head to buy newspapers instead of spending that hard-earned shilling on food for the family table.