Publishers Association Sets New Roadmap

25 April 2011

The Publisher Association of Liberia (PAL) resolved over the weekend to take appropriate steps to improve its relationship with its business partners, including advertisers and printers.

The association reached the decision at a well-attended meeting held at a local conference hall outside Monrovia.

PAL’s President, The Analyst’s Managing Editor Stanley Seakor, told the publishers that the gathering was intended to reflect on the association’s activities and to design a fresh roadmap aimed at charting a new course, especially as the country moves towards the 2011 elections.

During deliberations, the publishers acknowledged that the challenges confronting the print industry were quite enormous; and that it would therefore require a more robust, proactive, and tenacious leadership to lead recovery efforts.

“Henceforth, PAL Leadership in collaboration with its membership has constituted an Advisory Committee that will juxtapose with the current Leadership aimed at firmly bracing the body Leadership to be able to lead the organization to a nobler destination,” a PAL release said.

The weekend meeting selected Philipbert Browne, Publisher of the National Chronicle, to chair the committee, with Philip N. Wesseh, Publisher of the Inquirer newspaper, as co-chair.

It also named the former President of the Press Union of Liberia (PUL) and Publisher of the Liberian Express newspaper, James G. Kiazolu, as secretary general.

The publishers also observed with frustration and discontent, the continued lackadaisical posture of public institutions to settle debts owed newspapers even in the face of repeated warnings from President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf to heads of public institutions to settle their obligations to newspaper on a timely basis.

“Consequently, PAL views the continued delay in settling newspaper debts as capital strangulation of an industry that barely survives on ‘shoe-string’ budget,” he release said.

It then quoted the publishers as saying that they were ‘shovel-ready’ to form a common and united front in tackling this nightmare as they could no longer afford to sit and see their institutions get financially suffocated as a result of this perpetual delay in settling the debts of media institutions by public institutions. They did not say what shovel-ready would entail, however.

“On the ensuing 2011 General and Presidential elections, PAL says it considers the process as critical and crucial to the forward march of Liberia’s nascent democracy, as such, PAL will remained engage in providing a ‘clear-cut’ electoral roadmap for its membership that will ensure the process is free, fair and transparent, and its results credible and acceptable nationally and internationally,” the release said.

Meanwhile, the PAL has appointed broadcast journalist and owner of SKY FM Radio, T-Max Jalateh, as its liaison person between the print and electronic media.

“The PAL says the move is intended to enhance cordial relationship between the pair and to strengthen media solidarity as the press embarks on yet another herculean task of mirroring the 2011 electoral showdown,” said the release, signed PAL Secretary General, D. Robert Wilmot Kpadeh, and approved by its President, Stanley Seakor.

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