Late one night, South African journalist Simon Allison woke up his wife with an idea: a weekly African newspaper for Africans, distributed through WhatsApp.
She told him to go back to sleep, and “keep it for the morning,” but that was the birth of The Continent, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Even though it is published as a PDF and distributed on a messaging platform, The Continent feels like an old-fashioned newspaper: catchy headlines, short stories, reported pieces and interviews.
Photo: AFP
It is also free and available only through WhatsApp, the most widely used messaging system in Africa.
Zimbabwean daily 263Chat was the trendsetter in sharing newspapers on WhatsApp, Allison said during an interview at his suburban Johannesburg house.
“We wanted to create a newspaper, not a Web site,” he said.
Kiri Rupiah, 34, the team’s distributor and “geek,” said that the paper has helped to filter the deluge of information that came with the uncertainties of the pandemic.
“Our families started using us as informal fact-checkers. ‘Is this true about COVID?’ And all these exchanges were happening on WhatsApp,” Rupiah said.
“We are different than most newsrooms who want lots of subscribers,” she said. “I want 10 people who are engaged, that are going to share with six or seven people they know.”
“They also have access to us,” she added. “It creates community and trust.”
A university professor was one of their first fans.
“He shares the newspaper every week with 50 people,” and because he recommends it, they are likely to read it, Rupiah said.
She has cellphone numbers of all of the nearly 17,000 subscribers, even receiving “a nude by mistake” from one overeager subscriber.
“He was super apologetic,” Rupiah said.
Barely two weeks passed from that first, late-night idea and the first issue in April 2020, said the bespectacled Allison, who converted his guest room into the newspaper office.
He had help from three journalism students, who were happy to keep busy during the pandemic, and hired a few freelancers, paying them from his own pocket for the first few months.
The debut edition went out to friends and family, but “after 48 hours, we had 1,000 subscribers. We achieved virality in a week,” Allison said.
At the time he was the Africa editor of the Mail & Guardian, a dynamic South African weekly.
With his cofounder Sipho Kings, they went fundraising, with pro-democracy charities chipping in.
“Funders see us as a weapon against disinformation, an innovative way to combat it,” he said.
They have enough funding to cover tightly budgeted operating costs over the next two years, they said.
The energetic team of journalists in their 30s — based mostly in South Africa, but also in Uganda and the UK — is teeming with story ideas.
“If we had more funding we could do more fun things,” said Allison, who wants to launch a French or even a Kiswahili edition.
He said he is proud of some of their groundbreaking work so far.
One of their notable stories came in February last year, under the headline: “The country where COVID doesn’t exist.” It looked at Tanzania, where the president had declared that COVID-19 did not exist — even as hospitals and cemeteries were overflowing.
Distributing through WhatsApp is fast and convenient, but also protects against censorship.
“Governments can censor print, Web site as well. That’s pretty easy,” Allison said. “But WhatsApp messages encrypted and published from South Africa, which has strict media laws ... there is no way to censor.”
SECRET AGREEMENT: China is paying for construction at Ream Naval Base, where dredging would be needed if larger military ships were to dock there, AMTI said Dredgers have been spotted off Cambodia’s Ream Naval Base, where China is funding construction work and deeper port facilities would be necessary for the docking of larger military ships, a US think tank said on Friday. The US, which has sought to push back against Beijing’s extensive territorial claims and military expansion in the South China Sea, reiterated its “serious concerns” about China’s construction and military presence at Ream. “These developments threaten US and partner interests, regional security and Cambodia’s sovereignty,” a US Department of State spokesperson said. The report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank said the
France is to relax some COVID-19 restrictions from early next month in a bet that an outbreak of the Omicron variant of SARS-COV-2 would recede thanks to faster inoculations and plans to shut the unvaccinated out of most social activities. The French government is to lift the obligation to work from home at least three days a week from Feb. 2, French Prime Minister Jean Castex said on Thursday. It would also remove a requirement to wear a mask outdoors, and scrap attendance limits for sports arenas and cultural venues, Castex said. Infections with the Delta variant are “clearly receding,” while the
‘PRECAUTIONARY MEASURE’: Authorities asked anyone who bought a hamster after Dec. 22 to hand it over after hamsters at a shop tested positive for the Delta variant Hong Kong’s government yesterday faced outrage over its decision to cull hundreds of small animals after hamsters in a store tested positive for COVID-19. Like China, Hong Kong maintains a staunch “zero COVID” policy, stamping out the merest trace of the virus with contact tracing, mass testing, strict quarantines and prolonged social distancing rules. Its latest measures target hamsters and other small mammals — including chinchillas, rabbits and guinea pigs, which authorities on Tuesday said would be culled as a “precautionary measure.” The drastic move came after hamsters sold at the Little Boss pet shop tested positive for the Delta variant of
RED LINE: The US and its allies would not accept if ‘any’ Russian troops cross into Ukraine, the state secretary said, clarifying Biden’s remarks about a ‘minor incursion’ The US and its allies on Thursday warned Moscow of grave consequences if “any” of the tens of thousands of troops massed on the border were to cross into Ukraine. Following talks in Berlin with Germany, France and the UK, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Russia “cannot match” Western powers’ resoluteness. Allowing Russia to breach Ukraine’s territorial integrity would “drag us all back to a much more dangerous and unstable time, when this continent, and this city, were divided in two ... with the threat of all-out war hanging over everyone’s heads,” he told reporters. In a show of that
RSS