{"id":7189,"date":"2020-04-27T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-04-27T02:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testblogs.griffith.edu.au\/asiainsights\/?p=7189"},"modified":"2023-03-10T10:49:52","modified_gmt":"2023-03-10T00:49:52","slug":"finding-and-reporting-news-in-solomon-islands-the-early-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testblogs.griffith.edu.au\/asiainsights\/finding-and-reporting-news-in-solomon-islands-the-early-days\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding and reporting news in Solomon Islands: the early days"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Solomon Toktok<\/em> was my third attempt to establish an independent\nnewspaper in Solomon Islands in 1977. The first one was <em>Kio Kio Nius<\/em>,\nthe second was <em>Melanesian Nius<\/em>, but both weeklies were short-lived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I chose the name <em>Kio Kio<\/em>, a coastal kingfisher because\nin some parts of Sol,omon Islands the bird was thought to informvillagers that\na ship was sailing along or a man was passing through villages.&nbsp; Kingfishers relayed messages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This evolved into <em>Melanesia Nius<\/em>, to cover the\nMelanesian group countries in the South Pacific as it was becoming a regional bloc\nto be reckoned with in the early and late 1970s. Fiji and Papua New Guinea had\nbecome independent while Solomon Islands and Vanuatu were in the process of gaining\nindependence from their colonial rulers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But the scope was too wide for me to cover and so I\ndecided to drop that name and focus on just the one country, my own. I founded <em>Solomon\nToktok<\/em> with the slogan \u201cIndependent \u2013 Outspoken \u2013 Effective\u201d as the guiding\nnews policy of the newspaper. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I believed <em>Solomon Toktok<\/em> ought to offer\nalternative views as the Government operated the Broadcasting Service,\npublished a government weekly newspaper, <em>Solomon News Drum<\/em>, and ran the\nInformation Services, which collected mostly government news.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Initially, I ran <em>Solomon Toktok<\/em> single-handedly:\ncollecting and writing stories, soliciting for advertisements, delivering\npapers at newspaper outlets, taking photographs, administering accounts and\nbanking, newspaper wrapping and newspaper paste-up or lay-out, a task that I\nhad hated most. It didn\u2019t come easily to me as my training and background were\nin broadcast journalism. The same went for putting together headlines and\ncaptioning photographs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I leaned on my former boss Ashley Wickham and the late\nWelshman Teilo, who was in broadcasting, for help in the areas I found\nchallenging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As a trailblazer in the private media business we\nfaced many challenges, even once we had recruited and trained staff to fill the\nmany roles the business needed:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Lack\nof Government support as our alternate views offered by us were new and\nconfronting for politicians, officials and their supporters <\/li><li>Rarity\nof people with professional media experience<\/li><li>High\noverheads: printing was costly as there were no computers. The company that did\nour printing also did the type-setting, newspaper layout, darkroom work,\nprinting, newspaper collating and folding<\/li><li>Insufficient\nrevenue from advertising, subscriptions and sales to meet high printing costs<\/li><li>The\npaper lacked a chief reporter as I could not afford to engage one<\/li><li>My\nnews reporters and graphic artists worked long hours for small pay<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In efforts to improve <em>Solomon Toktok<\/em> I took the\nfollowing actions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>I\nsent a reporter for journalism training at the East-West Centre in Hawaii. He\nreturned a brilliant newsman but was a slow worker<\/li><li>I took\nout a loan to buy a printing machine. The idea was to reduce the printing cost\nbut when the printers found out about the printing machine, they refused to do\ndarkroom work for me<\/li><li>To\nimprove the content, my New Zealand wife, a nurse by profession was engaged to\nbe the chief reporter because she had a nose for news. She undertook a short\ntraining course in New Zealand<\/li><li>My\nin-laws helped fund a dedicated building for the newspaper so we did not have\nto pay rent<\/li><li>A friend\nfrom New Zealand, since deceased, helped us with marketing<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">With\nthe help of my wife\u2019s parents, a building to house the newsroom, the sales\nroom, the dark room, the printing room and administration\/accounts room was\nbuilt so we did not have to pay the rent<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">However, the effort needed to establish and sustain a\nbusiness in such a challenging environment took its toll. I was exhausted and\nmy marriage did not survive the journey. After my family relocated to New\nZealand, I stayed in Solomon Islands and tried to keep <em>Solomon Toktok <\/em>afloat\nfor another eight years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">With the absence of my family and tough competition from\na new newspaper, <em>Solomon Star<\/em> which was an offshoot of <em>Solomon News\nDrum<\/em> with government support, I finally decided to close down <em>Solomon\nToktok<\/em> in March 1992 and rejoined the state broadcaster, the Solomon\nIslands Broadcasting Corporation, SIBC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But what impact did <em>Solomon Toktok<\/em> have on the\nregional news-media, especially independent newspaper journalism?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Samoa, Tonga and Vanuatu followed <em>Solomon Toktok<\/em>\nwith journalists setting up independent newspapers, as their countries\u2019\ngovernments like Solomon Islands in those days, operated broadcasting services\nand published information service publications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Independent journalism was not always well received by\nthose in authority. New Zealand journalist, Mike Field, was banned from\nentering Tonga, Samoa, and Fiji because his approach to news reporting did not\ngo down well with the governments in those countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I later became his Solomon-based freelance journalist when he was the Pacific Agent for Agency France Press \u2013 AFP and continued to follow his independent style of news reporting for many years after.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"Author label wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>AUTHOR<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">George Atkin is a veteran journalist from Solomon Islands and was the founder and publisher of the independent newspaper\u00a0<em>Solomon Toktok<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Initially, I ran Solomon Toktok single-handedly: collecting and writing stories, soliciting for advertisements, delivering papers at newspaper outlets, taking photographs, administering accounts and banking, newspaper wrapping and newspaper paste-up or lay-out, a task that I had hated most. It didn\u2019t come easily to me as my training and background were in broadcast journalism. The same went for putting together headlines and captioning photographs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":7190,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[233,1755,1021,248],"tags":[1128,1072,936,1050,1023,1127],"class_list":["post-7189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feature-series","category-governance-democracy","category-pacific-outlook","category-png-and-the-pacific","tag-george-atkin","tag-journalism","tag-media","tag-pacific-outlook","tag-solomon-islands","tag-solomon-tok-tok"],"acf":[],"modified_by":"Kelsey O'Brien","yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Finding and reporting news in Solomon Islands: the early days | Griffith Asia Insights<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Initially, I ran Solomon Toktok single-handedly: collecting and writing stories, soliciting for advertisements, delivering papers at newspaper outlets, taking photographs, administering accounts and banking, newspaper wrapping and newspaper paste-up or lay-out, a task that I had hated most. 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