Private Newspapers Face Collapse

Zimbabwe’s private newspaper publishing companies face imminent collapse in the wake of prohibitive production costs which have since been compounded by an acute shortage of locally produced newsprint.

Mutare Board and Paper Mills (MBPM) warned of severe shortages of newsprint owing to intermittent power cuts, coal and foreign currency shortages. Executives in the newspaper industry confirmed to MISA-Zimbabwe that the dire situation had forced them to drastically reduce their print runs. The executives said they only had a weeks supply of newsprint which would force them off the streets if supplies are not replenished as a matter of urgency.

The situation could result in a serious news blackout and access to alternative information and ideas ahead of the presidential, parliamentary, senatorial and local government elections slated for 29 March 2008. Privately owned national weeklies, The Financial Gazette, Zimbabwe Independent and Standard will be hard hit if the shortages of newsprint persist.

This will leave the media landscape at the mercy of the state-controlled Zimpapers publications which are subsidised by the government. There is growing fear that the private press could be starved of newsprint as Art Corporation owners of MBPM could come under political pressure to divert all supplies to the state-controlled newspapers, which are expected to spearhead the ruling Zanu PF election campaign.

Erratic coal supplies and unviable prices for newsprint have seriously affected production at MBPM which since be scaled down to 30 percent forcing the company to freeze newsprint exports.

It is, however, feared that the problems at MBPM could be the work of some politicians bent on taking over the company under the pretext that it has failed to deliver.

Justin Mutasa, the group chief executive officer of Zimpapers on 30 January 2008 disclosed that the state-controlled company had also been forced to reduce its print run of its flagship , The Herald.