Dear Editor,
The imminent closure of Stabroek News has evoked an outpouring of extraordinary praise, admiration, and appreciation from across Guyana and the Diaspora.
This is a deserving tribute to the vision and patriotic commitment of SN’s founders, David and Doreen de Caires, and Miles Fitzpatrick, who seized the opportunity presented by the opening in 1985 to address the great need for an independent national newspaper in Guyana. Their efforts have resulted in the exceptional quality and excellence of print journalism that Stabroek News has endowed on Guyana for four decades (1986-2026).
Beyond the founders and their family, original supporters, shareholders, and Directors, today’s credit and honour are undisputably for the editor-in-chief, his team of professional writers, business managers, technical personnel for printing and distribution services, and all other workers who have kept the offices running. In addition, vendors and all subscribers, local and overseas, must be recognized. We all owe an unpayable debt to Stabroek News for a legacy of principled, courageous, balanced, and independent journalism of the highest integrity.
Within an ethos remarkably respectful of the truth, just days ago, the newspaper unreservedly provided a page-one apology, for which due acknowledgement is offered. As widely recognised in “letters columns”, SN’s non-negotiable defence of editorial freedom, and its contribution to fostering and promoting constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech and of the press, are rightly regarded as intrinsic to democracy. The SN editorial of Wednes-day, March 11, noted that “[n]o entity that existed for nearly 40 years and was interwoven with so many lives could simply disappear without leaving a void. The larger challenge facing journalism in Guyana, and the quality of the public life on which the country’s democracy ultimately depends on is how it will be filled.”
Indeed, as the rich legacy that SN has offered faces a void with its closure on March 15, the question that arises is how the gap will be filled. None should be naïve of the objective conditions that threaten the commercial viability of print journalism today, marked by a decline in readership and the shift to digital media, with even online news anchored by informed expertise competing with “instant” opinions and news bytes, Tik Tok-style. Print journalism, world-wide and as expected in Guyana also, has been suffering a decline in advertising, which has long constituted a major source of income.
But the significant and heartfelt outpouring of goodwill and concern that SN’s rich legacy should not be lost leads us to believe that there is a near consensus of voices calling for a consortium of interested persons, drawing on the accumulated experience, motivation and courage of SN’s and other human resources, to explore a principled basis and financially feasible process by which the SN “void” would be filled.
As Guyanese in the Diaspora, we are prepared to support efforts in Guyana and elsewhere, in keeping with the ethos, mission, and unfaltering commitment of today’s SN, to join the common cause to achieve a reinvented entity for which all Guyana would be truly proud.