DECLINE AND FALL OF THE NEW NATION AND THE UK AFRICAN/CARIBBEAN HERITAGE PRESS   The surprise was that there was any surprise Poor management and flawed business model “In the beginning was the Word” affirms the Gospel of John. The “word” is essential for any concept, spiritual or temporal, and for any people or culture to express its own identity. That is why the pioneers of the UK African and Caribbean communities considered the establishment of the West Indian Gazette, the country’s first regular black newspaper, to have been such an important landmark. Now barely 50 years later the New Nation, one of the two main weekly newspapers operating in this sector, has gone into administration. To be honest, it did not come a moment too soon because the industry has been known to have been ailing for some time.  The surprise was that there was any surprise. Does that mean that the mean for an independent African/Caribbean voice no longer exists? Was the demise inevitable? Michael Eboda, the newspaper’s editor between 1997 and 2007, attributes the failure to poor management and a flawed business model. He told Overgroundonline journal: “Eastern Eye (the sister-newspaper aimed at an UK Asian readership) was advertised on buses and stuff like that. We didn’t advertise but still sold twice as many copies. That was an achievement because Britain’s Asian population is twice the size of the black population is twice the size of the black population. .... New Nation went into administration because the Ethnic Media Group (the publishers) didn’t know how to bring advertising in. I’m not saying there wasn’t advertising to bring in – they just didn’t know how”.  Justin Onyeka, the deputy editor until 2007, is quoted as saying that he believed the failure of the Ethnic Media Group to establish its brands online ultimately led to the company’s demise. “The powers that be were media dinosaurs who never seized the opportunity to take the paper forward. Everything the paper achieved was generated through editorial rather than marketing or management. There was a great opportunity to established something effective online but there was a strong reluctance to do that. In addition to the recession, just the whole way in which people consume media has changed, which explains why online news sites are thriving”. There was no need for it to exist The contrast between the crusading spirit of the West Indian Gazette and the routine news presentation of its successors indicates that a lack of identity is every bit as much a cause of the failure as technical shortcomings or a failure to grasp opportunities of presentation. The New Nation continued to exist because there was no need for it to exist. Whatever the culturally/politically correct answer UK Africans and Caribbean have always derived their first source of news from radio/television and the national press including the less-than-sympathetic Daily Mirror, Sun and Daily Express. A specifically “black” press has had to justify itself by taking up issues that could not be found elsewhere – relevant campaigns, news of local events and entertainment and providing, as broadcaster Syd Burke introduced his former London radio programme “Rice ‘n’ Peas”, “a black point of view”. Repeating stories of people and events already covered in depth elsewhere, just because they happened to be black, was no justification. Changed the nature of the industry McCalla took advantage of legislation The watershed occurred as far back as the early 1980s when the Greater London Council and the radical administrations of inner-city boroughs realised that there were votes in the Caribbean/African community. They intervened with advertising and other support which, though meant to help, changed the nature of the industry. The seeds of decline were sown then. A new brand of journalists and administrators, backed by advisers, forced the older campaigners to the sideline. The main victim was the Westindian World, the first weekly (as opposed to merely regular) black newspaper, with its blend of international and national news and local gossip. The readership and the influence of the Weekly Gleaner, outpost of the celebrated Jamaica newspaper group, was shredded. The Caribbean Times, founded by Arif Ali, the publishing “genius” of his generation, was forced into a niche, then into the sidelines, and eventually into extinction. Black publishers / journalists may have been hitherto the victims of adverse market forces, but henceforth they did not have any real control. It is said with justification that when Val McCalla founded the Voice, the sole survivor now in this market, in 1982 he took advantage of legislation which required public service advertisers to advertise in the black press. The then existing publications were wrong-footed – but why was it necessary for the public services to advertise in a new newspaper rather than to support the independent-minded existing publications with a proven record. Perhaps it was just because they were independent-minded. They say that he who pays the piper calls the tune, and so it has always proved to be.  There developed, too, an unfortunate trend to inflate and overstate sales and influence. The bubble pricked Response just dried up The edifice began to crumble following McCallas death in August 2002. The new owners of the Voice took a long hard look at themselves – at about the same time as the industry started to take a hard look at the claims of the newspaper. The bubble was pricked by The Trumpet, a UK Nigerian free-distribution newspaper, claiming to have the largest circulation of any African/Caribbean newspaper in the country. The Caribbean Times, New Nation, Voice and Weekly Gleaner, each of which was claiming readership figures which just did not “stand up”, countered by promising to bring out their own audited returns. The audited sales of the Caribbean Times were so far below expectation that the others decided that auditing was not such a good idea after all. As a regular contributor to these publications, and advertiser of my promotions, I did not need to be told that the cupboard was exceptionally bare. Readers’ letters in response to editorial articles just dried up. Furthermore, whereas models for our fashion shows and beauty contests, could be drawn once exclusively from advertisement in this sector of the industry, no applicants had been received for several years. It was apparent that whatever readership there was, however much below the “given” figures, would have been even lower, disastrously, if it did not include the copies ordered “out of duty or sympathy” by libraries, colleges and public offices the length and breadth of the country. People were just not buying the papers. It was not difficult to see why. Competed for a declining readership Too close to the politicians The market could not support four main weekly newspapers – at least, could not do so in behaving the way that they did. It was argued that all four might have survived if each had concentrated on one theme – politics, sport, entertainment, social news – so that an interested reader would have to buy all four to obtain a comprehensive view. As it was they competed against each other for a declining readership. The Weekly Gleaner bought The Voice, but it was the latter which secured the higher profile while the former wasted away to a shadow of itself. The Caribbean Times followed some time later, and now the New Nation has gone too. Journalism became a “desk job” rather than one of “hands on” investigation. Press releases were topped and tailed and syndicated interviews were presented as exclusive. That wasn’t journalism as most journalists knew it.  Just before the New Nation closed I co-operated with one of their journalists on a front-page story and was shocked that she described her job as a journalist as being “chained to a desk”. The attitude of the Weekly Gleaner towards its editorial content is significant. Whereas giants such as Theodore Sealy, Hector Wynter and George John – the legends of Caribbean journalism – once held sway from the editor’s chair, the position was suddenly devolved on media studies students freshly out of college. The first of whom lasted less than a year, mainly because she had taken the position seriously, and the second to seek “promotion” from being editor of the Weekly Gleaner to becoming a television Teletext text-writer. The UK Caribbean / African newspapers were seen as being too close to the politicians and prominent citizens who gave them succour. In truth, you cannot see a newspaper criticising a politician, a department of national/local government, or a political party if they knew that it would result in the withdrawal of funds, which might be given very easily to their competitors. Furthermore they owed their continued high profile, which was not justified by sales, to be seen in the company of high-profile people. Only a very brave person, or a fool, would bite the hand that feeds it. There were no paid advertisements Thrive and fall with the politicians The “safety-net” of public service advertising, which make these newspapers viable, eroded their necessity to seek support from local and specialised advertisements. As we have seen from former editor Michael Eboda at the start of this article they just lost the knack. That did not matter so much in the good times, but it was foolhardy when public service budgets were pruned drastically. Just last summer at a meeting in the office of the Mayor of Newham, the photographer, who claimed to have worked previously with the New Nation, said that nearly all the published free of charge to hide the fact that there were no paid advertisements and also to try to induce prospective advertisers that there was existing support. The danger that publications will thrive and fall with the politicians whom they support and on whom they depend for support was under-scored by the last London Mayoral Election. They lavished praise on Ken Livingstone. To be honest, he did share many of their aspirations, seemed to show genuine concern for the issues which governed their lives, and was known to them from the way-back years of the early-1980s when their environment was created. Even so, it was often too uncritical, especially in respect of several of his advisers. What would happen if Livingstone were to lose and a rival to whom the black press had been opposed were to be elected in his place? Last summer Boris Johnson, the Conservative Party candidate, achieved that feat and with a few months the New Nation went into administration. A voice to be heard The word is essential Is there then a need for a specific UK Caribbean / African press? Yes, indeed, but not in the form in which it has existed for a quarter-of-a-century – not by merely shadowing the national media. Radio, television and the websites have shown the way to diversity, and the front-line newspapers could “draw the teeth” of the demand for a specialised press by appointing more African and Caribbean heritage journalists and editors to responsible position. There is some evidence that one or two newspapers – but by no means all of them – have drawn and acted upon this conclusion. Nevertheless there is a voice to be heard, campaigns to be fought and argued by the people affected most by them, and, to return to Syd Burke, for a “black point of view”. But never must that responsibility be handed to politicians, whether or not they come laden with favourable budgets.  “In the beginning was the Word”. The word is essential to any concept. The voice and identity of the UK African / Caribbean community will be expressed only if there is a word by which it can be expressed. An entity which has no means of expressing itself will go voiceless and unheard, and its identity will be without form and void. The New African was not that “word”, and neither, I suspect, is “The Voice” whose own continuation cannot be guaranteed. Their successors, in whichever form they materialised, will exist only if their potential readers want them to exist.