GEORGETOWN, Guyana, CMC – Stabroek News, one of Guyana’s daily newspapers launched in the 1960s, announced on Friday that it had taken the ”extraordinarily difficult and painful” decision to shut down its operations.
Stabroek News becomes the second media entity in the Caribbean to cease operations in recent weeks, following the NEWSDAY newspaper in Trinidad and Tobago.
In a lengthy statement, Isabelle and Brendan de Caires, the two main shareholders of Stabroek News, said that in the past year, the state-run Department of Public Information (DPI) has accrued a debt to this newspaper in excess of GUY$80,000,000 (One Guyana dollar=US$0.004 cents) in unpaid advertisements.
“The debt persists despite repeated private and public entreaties to clear it. This tactic could equally be construed as an attempt to starve this company of its operating funds.”
Further, they said, “publishing has always been a precarious undertaking in Guyana and the Caribbean due to the modest size of the potential readership, and to other market constraints. No one becomes a publisher in Guyana to grow rich.
“While a concern about profit has never driven the company, it must function as a business. It is a given that any business needs to diversify, adapt continually, and seek alternative sources of income. We have faced significant obstacles.
“We have repeatedly sought (and been refused) a radio licence. Although we operated a TV subsidiary for a few decades, our main local competitors enjoyed significant privileges. The playing field was not level. The anticipated progression from newspaper to multi-media broadcaster has been impossible,” the two main shareholders said in the statement.
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