June 26, 2006
And another one's gone
The Sub-Saharan Informer was missing from the news-stands in Addis Ababa this weekend.
The English-language, Addis-based newspaper hadn't sold out. It never came out.
Its staff spent all Thursday night laying out the latest edition. But when they delivered everything to the printers, they hit a brick wall. The printers told the paper they had had a phone call from the Ministry of Information telling them not to start the presses. They said the Ministry told them it had temporarily withdrawn the paper's license.
This is the latest stage in a long and convoluted tale.
Back in April, this site reported that the Sub-Saharan Informer had been thrown out of its offices in the Bulgarian Embassy. Here are more details on the tangled reasons behind that decision.
The paper spent the next month or so searching the city for affordable office space. It finally settled on a place in a brand new office block opposite the Dembel Centre just off Bole Road.
The paper has now been told that it failed to inform the Ministry of its change of address officially. (The paper insists it did inform the Ministry). As a result, its license has been revoked.
No one at the paper knows whether this is a final revocation, or just a temporary blip that will be resolved with a quick exchange of paperwork. No one knows why they weren't told of the decision before they went to all the time and expense of writing and laying out an entire edition. We will have to wait and see what happens next.
In the meantime we will just have to make do with the three surviving English-language papers that are still worth reading – The Reporter and the business titles Capital and Fortune. (In case anyone is interested, there is still no sign of the bulk of the country's blogs.)
Posted by aheavens at June 26, 2006 10:23 AM