The Tribune

“HAS VAT blown the BIG T away!“ quipped one reader on The Tribune’s announcement that its three-year-old weekend edition had ceased publication.

Not at all. VAT has affected Tribune Media as it has affected every business in the Bahamas, but it has had nothing to do with the closure of the Big T and the decisions that have been made for The Tribune’s future.

The Tribune, as it has done from its bold beginning as a tiny sheet on November 21, 1903, is moving with the times. Our readers are dictating those moves as their daily living habits are changing.

In 1903, The Tribune was the first newspaper published for every segment of Bahamian society — from the highest to the lowest; from the front of the hill to “over the hill”. It was launched as a twice weekly, Mondays and Wednesdays publication. However, in its first year of publication it appeared in various forms and sizes — sometimes as a daily one sheet, more frequently as a four-page bi-weekly. But that one sheet was certainly not the size of today’s broadsheet. In those days, The Tribune’s printed page was only 41/2 inches by 81/2 inches.

Today — with its various sections — The Tribune ranges in size from 80 pages on Mondays to about 100 pages on Thursdays.

Eventually, The Tribune became a Wednesday and Saturday publication. When it was announced that we would publish daily, our regular readers could not change their habits. Wednesdays and Saturdays remained for them their reading days, until Saturday eventually took the lead as the day when The Tribune had to print extra papers because that was the day we always sold out. Regular readers often arrived at The Tribune’s back door on a Saturday to wait for their Tribune to come off the presses. They never left without giving us a tidbit of information to chase up for Monday’s edition. But no more. Times and habits have changed. Now the hottest selling day of the week has switched to Thursdays — the day when Bahamians clamour for the Obituary section to see if any of their friends have passed on. Monday’s edition is a close runner up.

The Bahamas is no longer like the rest of the world where the weekend edition is still the largest publication day — we recall the days in New York when a shopping trolley was the most convenient way to bring the weekend New York Times back to college. However, Bahamian weekend reading no longer follows the international trend. Subscribers still have their weekend Tribune delivered, but Saturday street sales have dropped off.

We thought that a different tabloid-sized Tribune — hence the Big T — would attract readers. But not so. Reading habits had changed, life styles have changed and now The Tribune has to change, not only to accommodate the move into the future of how news is disseminated, but to accommodate our subscribers’ reading habits.

It all started when Shirley and Bay Streets became one-way streets, government offices closed on Saturdays and the daily traffic to and from town slackened. The street hawkers saw no advantage to standing out in the hot sun to service the slow trickle of traffic to and from town on a Saturday. They were used to bumper-to-bumper traffic, and quick sales – with a driver making many trips to and from our Shirley Street office to keep them supplied with Tribunes for sale.

Eventually, Bahamians’ way of life and reading habits started to change, and the hawkers decided to follow the trend by taking Saturdays off. From 45 hawkers arriving daily from Mondays to Fridays to purchase The Tribune, Saturday sales could only count on eight to ten regulars.

Despite the time and effort put into the Big T, which turned out to be a newsy edition, it was time to tune into our readers’ needs. They had shed their old habits, and so it was time for The Tribune to move on, modernise and follow the trend into the future.

As our readers will see on page three of today’s edition many of the changes that we have planned are incorporating the old, but adding the new. News will now be delivered to our readers in print, by the web and over the airwaves. Bahamians will be kept up to date on the day’s happenings, both here and abroad — six days a week. They will have their newspaper daily from Monday to Friday with many new editions, new personalities and an enlarged weekend Tribune to round out the week.

Despite no Saturday publication, The Tribune will continue to report the news on digital platforms – on its website, tribune242.com, and via social media through Facebook and Twitter. Breaking stories will appear during the day on Friday and more considered reports from 6am on Saturdays. There also will be a news break on our radio stations on Saturdays at 9am.

To read about our plans — and this is just the beginning of what we have in store for you — turn to page 3 of today’s publication.

We would appreciate your comments and suggestions of features that you would like us to include.

The Tribune is here to keep you informed, so please let us know what we might be missing that you would like to hear and read about.