A New Era, as I experienced it

By Dexter Rose

The year was 1995 and I took a call one day from my brother Renwick Rose. There was not much chitchat as he went straight to the point. He said that he, Adrian Fraser, Bassy Alexander and Oscar Allen, had broken away -finally- from The News newspaper where they had been columnists since early in that organ’s inception. They were considering the publication of a quarterly I was told.

Without hesitation, I offered that, with a quarterly, the public would soon forget about any publication between one quarter and the next. I therefore offered the advice that the market was ripe for an exciting, uplifting newspaper and suggested a weekly instead.

The idea was accepted and from then on, a series of meetings ensued between those persons -designated The Founders- and a few others covering issues of registration, financing, staffing. It was decided that retired educator Norma Keizer, who had been involved many years earlier with the Educational Forum of the People’s publication Forum, would be approached to be Editor. And fortuitously she agreed.

It was an exciting time! It was decided that the new organ would be called Searchlight, in homage to the ill-fated radio call-in experiment of the same name at the nation’s lone Radio 705, which had been quickly discontinued by the government of the day, unaccustomed to the public having the freedom to comment on issues of the day.

The Founders were a group of well meaning dreamers. They, however, enlisted the legal and financial advice and assistance of lawyer Andrew Cummings and accountant Floyd Patterson. So the legal work was done pro bono. Patterson similarly did not send an invoice for his advice. Educator Norma Keizer worked without taking a salary. Any advice from me was never even considered to be more than that.

We negotiated a financing agreement with the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, which provided loans to us on very friendly, concessional terms. We engaged the services of Jerry George who then dabbled in computers, as we needed that sort of expertise with our desktop publishing. Artist Jillian McIntyre was employed to apply her artistic skills to layout and there was always the big brother Harold Hoyte Managing Editor at The Nation Newspaper in Barbados, giving back the sort of favours his own establishment had received from The Trinidad Express when the Barbadian concern had started.

The first editions were exciting. There was a team of fresh reporters including Hans King. The first edition announced A NEW ERA in its headline. But attracting advertising was a challenge and this is where having a former headteacher as Managing Editor came in handy, very important. Who would deny your former headteacher or your daughter’s former headteacher “a little advert?”

Searchlight hit the road running with an impressive distribution network which reached into Chateaubelair on the north west and Georgetown and beyond on the northern parts of the mainland. We also sent papers then into Bequia.

The paper tapped in on established newspaper vendors around Kingstown and added more, such as into the E.T Joshua Airport souvenir shop and, importantly, some energetic young distributors headed by O’Neal “Sco-Dash” Cumberbach, ensured vendors received their supply of the newspaper early.

Very soon our circulation was competing very favourably with the two older weeklies. The weekly competition was exciting. Our paper was clearly more attractive than the others, with great use of bold headlines and photographs. There was even bold photo-journalism with a half page PhotOpinion which spoke for itself.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves here. The paper had to be taken to The Nation for printing on a disk. It meant catching a flight early Thursday morning to Barbados after a long Wednesday night of preparation. That became the role of Jerry George. The return of the printed paper was via a small plane packed with newspapers.
I recall a memorable flight back after I had travelled along with Jerry to The Nation and totally enjoying the thrill of taking off in the early dawn for the flight back with the Sun rising over Barbados. Enchanting!!

Those were indeed heady times and marked the beginning of an important New Era in newspaper publishing in SVG.