Mass Media Namibia

In Namibia there are three most common daily newspapers namely The Namibian, New Era and Namibian Sun, these newspapers are all printing mostly daily events and they target the Namibian nation at large.

The Namibian newspaper was established on 30 August 1985 by the Free Trust of Namibia as a weekly newspaper editored by Gwen Lister.reliant on support of donors which aimed to promote Namibian indipendece,its first print run of 10 000 then it became a daily newspaper on 01 April 1989.[1]

Publication was made possible by the international donor agencies and European union, in 1991 the funding was ceased since it became a self-sustainable publication. And its stories come in English and in a local language Oshiwambo mostly spoken in the northern part of Namibia.

A noteworthy feature of the Namibian is the SMS pages called 'what are you saying! These pages dedicated to short messages to the editor allows citizens from all over the country to comment on and raise topics since mobile phones are widespread and cheaper and easier than mail or internet. According to the former editor Gwen Lister,The Namibian was the first paper to offer such an open forum for discussion via text message since similar programes at other media(e.g. In South Africa)only allowed to comment on chosen articles.it have also supplement like Bottom Line which comes business news, views and everything you need to know about the economy. There is other supplements which comes weekly such as youth paper focusing on youth readers, Top Revs about motors and the weekender a weekly Friday magazine on the arts,culture,health and social developments. It publishes national news based on politics,economic,crimes and corruption cases, health related matters, sport and its supplement Back of the Book comes with international stories.

Advertisers can confirm how many copies of the paper are sold and how many people are reading their adverts since this newspaper is audited by ABC (Audited Bureau of Circulation) it puts back its profit into social development projects such as annual newspaper cup and readers SMS competitions.

With its offices in Windhoek,Swakopmund,Keetmanshoop and Oshakati this newspaper prints 60 000 plus copies and only two to six percent of a newspapers a day are returned and it now circulates 25 396 in Windhoek,18 415 in the north and 7 025 in the Erongo region, one copy is read up to eight people per day.

'This newspaper is a non-owned, its owned by a Trust that is why I can never say it is my newspaper it is probably unique in maybe not Africa but the world, it is because we start with a donor so everybody who works here are salary personnel says former editor Gwen Lister.

Current editor of the paper is Tangeni Amupadhi and it is regarded as the most read and biggest newspaper in the country, it is started to show massive growth in circulation in the last two years.

A state owned newspaper New Era it is committed to providing an objective and factual information service to various readership groups within its authorizing environment. Established in terms of New Era publication corporation Act no.1 of 1992,publishes a newspaper titled New Era that contains well researched and in-depth news and feature articles on political,socio-economic,cultural,governmental and developmental issues of national regional and international significance, it is therefore a para-statal with regular subsidies of government money approximately 4 million per year, to sustain the publication

Through its diverse articles, written in English,Otjiherero,Silozi and Oshiwambo,the newspaper is founded on the premises that good journalism is a product of fair, accurate and balanced reporting.

As a national publication it lays special emphasis on reporting on community-related issues, especially as they relate to the rural areas of the country, matters of national interest as well as government-related issues which may concern the community this makes the newspaper a widely distributed product reaching the most remote parts of the country and rural areas thus providing its readers and advertisers with insight into happenings in all 13 regions of Namibia through its regional bureaux.Most of adverts and vacancies in this paper are those of government ministries and parastatals.

Through its special project initiative is an autonomous entity whose policies are set and directed by a board of directors.it is day to day operations are managed by The Chief Executive officer assisted by an executive team.

Editored by Rajah Munamava, new editors are strongly involved in choosing news and they are in charge of selecting topics and administering the diary.

The Namibian Sun from a sensational start; The screaming headline- A community living in fear and loathing says...'STOP THIS' with this sensational headline the Namibian media industry witnessed the birth of a new newspaper on 20 September 2007,the launch edition of the Namibian sun was the talk of town owing to its sensational headline which caused intense and curiosity.

The main story was an account of 'The gruesome discovery of a decapitated woman in Grootfontein who was believed to have been butchered by her estranged husband' Several other human interest stories such as 'The Namibian youngest mother'-an 11 year old girl whose baby was fathered by a 28 years old man' were also making waves on day one.

This newspapers 's mainly objectives was to establish a newspaper that would mainly cater for a young, black readership with a circulation that would ensure prime penetration of the targeted readership, it was furthermore intended to reach readers who were not served or inadequately served by existing English dailies and weeklies, In addition the sun was designed to provide readers with a mixture of hard news, 'news that you can use' entertainment and sport news, presented in an easy to read and visually appealing way and like many other newspapers, Namibian Sun has also its challenges, 'A typical problem for new papers is that they get very few adverts when they most need

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