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Kite Festival
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Our modest digs
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Our modest digs

Above we see one side of the L-shaped desk that takes up most of the space in the low-rent office in which The Panama News is produced. The editor and publisher's mattress is on the other side. He's been living in the office for five years now.

The computer is not attached to the Internet. We get our access to the web mainly through Internet cafes. Nor is there a phone line. Although the yellow pages allied with Cable & Worthless allege that if one is not listed in that advertising medium a business does not exist, The Panama News is very real and contactable via the editor's Movistar cell phone at (507) 6-632-6343.

This news organization gets to where it needs to go on foot, on buses and in taxis. Sometimes we get the story by way of contributors who just happen to be at places where there are worthy news stories to be reported or photographs to be taken. There are certain stories that we'd like to do but which depend on rustling up some travel funds. (One of these articles is a business section tale for which the resources to send professional novelist and volunteer columnist Silvio Sirias to Santa Fe, Veraguas for a week or so need to be procured. It's the story of the rural cooperative that Father Héctor Gallego was murdered for founding, but which more than three decades after the priest's disappearance is nevertheless still a going concern.)

The Panama News started out in 1994 as a standard corporate business proposition but failed in that mode. Its editor, not having any children to go hungry for the crazy things he does, took it over and kept it going. In form, it's a sole proprietorship micro-enterprise, but in concept it's a community service.

So why not make The Panama News a non-profit foundation? Because that would involve governmental restrictions and paperwork, and getting legal status would depend on the whims of a government that's closely tied to the advertising cartel and the corporate mainstream media who do not wish independent journalism well.

Viewed from a readership perspective, The Panama News is flourishing. We have more readers online than we ever did when we were a free-distribution tabloid.

We have also attracted a talented pool of contributors who work for free or in exchange for advertising.

When is The Panama News going back into print? It's a question often posed to the editor. The answer is based in economics.

To go back into print on a sustainable basis, it will be necessary to go back into the corporate format, hire a business manager and a regular (if mainly part-time) staff, acquire more computers and programs and move into a larger office. Even then, The Panama News would remain a ragtag guerrilla operation instead of converting itself into a slick corporation, because there's already an oligarchy that dominates the world of oily government-subsidized propaganda and because most of the people who are attracted to The Panama News enjoy this publication precisely because it isn't aligned with the political factions, pompous families and sleazy hustlers who seek to control public information for their private ends.

So if it seems odd that a business that sells advertising also asks its readers for contributions twice a year, understand that The Panama News is not your ordinary business. By anything other than Arthur Anderson's style of accounting, we have been insolvent for years. We persist, however, and have costs like any other business, and a wish list of goods and services we need to take the next steps in our development.

At the top of the list, we need business management, probably on a part-time basis for a percentage of the proceeds. If there's any luck this could grow into a full-time job which, however, will surely never pay enough to support a BMW. The right person for that job would need to be a Panamanian citizen or a foreigner with the legal right to work here, possessed of the skills to conduct business in both English and Spanish, and and understanding of and sympathy for the cause of quality independent journalism.

We also get by with but one good computer and an exceptionally clunky backup in case of disaster. To maintain the present level of production with a margin of safety we need another good computer with the right legal software, and to go back into print we would need at least a third computer and some relatively expensive programs like Quark XPress. Because The Panama News has from time to time received threats and accidents sometimes do happen, it would be prudent to locate at least one backup computer away from our office.

The Panama News received an email the other day from someone who advised us to either fire the photographer or buy a better camera. The former is not an option, although it would be nice to be able to hire one of the many excellent professional photographers who are unable to find work in their field in Panama these days. And yes, when this organization is covering an event at which the corporate mainstream photojournalists arrive carrying digital Nikons with all the paraphernalia, it would be nice to have some comparable equipment.

These are some of the reasons why we ask for funds every March and September. It is understood that most of our readers are not in a position to contribute much in the way of money, and acknowledged that a lot of our resources, including cameras, the computer on which these words were written, Movistar prepay cell phone cards and so on, have been given to us as in-kind donations.

And it's not just twice a year that we ask our readers for donations of labor. The Panama News is more than a one-person show precisely because a small group of regular contributors and a somewhat larger group of occasional contributors send in their articles, photos and letters. The growth of this network is every bit as important an indicator of our success as our readership figures or financial bottom line. Our future coverage of things that ought to be reported but currently are not depends on the extension of our contributor network. Really, this growth is central to our intention to be the journalistic expression of Panama's large and varied English-speaking community.

Those of you who have lent us a hand over the years know who you are, and the editor and contributors thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

If you care to lend a hand, contact the editor at editor@thepanamanews.com.