Happy New Year to you! We hope 2021 will be a much better and more progressive year than 2020 was. That was a year which we would love to forget but impossible to forget. It was, by far, the worst the world has seen certainly in our lifetime.
For us at FreeMedia Group (the publishers of Politico Newspaper) the year was very challenging like it was for all other media outlets. Advertising was few and far between, sales dropped considerably, while production costs increased exponentially with some suppliers using Covid19 as a fig leaf for their price increases.
2020 came after we had received a grant from the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA) to set up a printing press. Procurement was made and supply was delivered. We could not kick it off because of technical, spare parts and human resource reasons, made worse by the coronavirus. It was tough! But we will launch the five-unit state-of-the-art Heidelberg printing machine this quarter and hope to be able to take printing jobs from the public including a few other newspapers.
As we resume publication there is a serious shortage of some essential production materials which means prices have further shot up in the New Year. Yet we have not increased the cover price of our newspaper or even advertising costs. It should not surprise anyone if we decide to do so soon.
That said, we are pleased to unveil the only female Editor of any regular let alone major newspaper in Sierra Leone. Mabinty Magdalene Kamara first joined Politico in 2015, as an intern from the Mass Communication Department at Fourah Bay College. She returned to complete her studies. Upon graduating she decided to join our team of mostly young, vibrant, talented and highly motivated journalists.
She rose to become Sub-editor but later went to work in civil society after Politico went under due to a serious financial setback.
When we resumed in 2019, she rejoined us. And late last year she became Deputy Editor. Months in that position, and now with Kemo Cham having left to pursue further studies, Miss Kamara has taken over the mantle as Editor.
We are very pleased to say that our new Editor is one of very few women in Sierra Leone who have ever become Editor of a newspaper they did not own. And this is no tokenism because she is profusely competent, very dedicated and consummately professional with the right skills and temperament.
She has a big shoe to fill though in Mr Cham who was a thorough, deliberate and hardworking man. He had come to Sierra Leone having fled the regime of Yahya Jammeh in his home country where he was a newspaper editor. He found a soulmate here and chose to stay even after the Gambian dictator was voted out of office. He worked with us through thick and thin.
Mabinty and Kemo were able to lead the staff and interns. We took four interns from the Mass Communication Department at FBC. They have been an invaluable addition to our team for the last three months. With their attachment elapsing this week, we are racing against time to recruit three reporters. We received applications in November and December last year and they are being processed for shortlisting for interviews shortly.
It is our fervent hope that 2021 will be better for more reasons than one. But please remember to wash your hands frequently, avoid large gatherings unless you have to be there and remember to mask up. Happy New Year, again!
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