The power of newspaper

“As a writer, write as if you are writing for your children or for the next 50 years to come” – Hassoum Ceesay
 
History has it that, Newspapers has been with us way back during the British colonial days from 1870s onwards like Bathurst Times, West African Gazette, Gambia Intelligencer, Bathurst Observer , Gambia Outlook, Gambia Onward, Nation newspaper all the way to the modern day business oriented newspapers. It goes without saying that, newspapers provide us with history of events that took place ages ago and current affairs.
In a chat with Hassoum Ceesay, he said newspapers serve as the first choice for researchers in gathering reliable information and provide up to date information on historical events which is why the NCAC have been collecting newspapers for the national archives since the 1980s to serve as a source of reliable information centre for future use.
According to Hassoum Ceesay, a historian/writer and the director of copyright, NCAC, the three major newspapers in the country were Gambia Outlook which started publications from 1922 to 1992 by Edward Francis Small, Gambia Onwards by R.S Allen from 1966 to 1994 and Nation newspaper by William Charles Dixon from 1965 to around 1998. All this papers are now extinct but the copies are kept in the archives
He went on to say that this is why it is imperative for Writers/reporters to forego leaving out some details they thought is not new to the people, and write as if they are writing for their own children (future researchers, PhD degree research works etc) in the next fifty years, to be able to feel in the blanks about the current things happening, companies, places, people etc that might be a rare information or extinct.
“What is in print is a gold mine” but the problem with some writers these days is they only think of the present day not tomorrow and underestimate their impact; whiles people are out there ready to make money off of their works.