Ju­lian Rogers

A third dai­ly in Trinidad and To­ba­go was al­ways a high-wire act. In to­day’s mar­ket, it bor­ders on a dare. The eco­nom­ics are un­for­giv­ing: print costs rise, read­er­ship habits drift, and ad­ver­tis­ers have been re­trained to ex­pect on­line to be cheap.

So, the move by News­day to com­mence le­gal pro­ceed­ings to wind up af­ter 32 years is not sim­ply a T&T sto­ry. It is a re­gion­al sig­nal flare. The pa­per re­port­ed that the pe­ti­tion to wind up Dai­ly News Lim­it­ed was filed on De­cem­ber 31, 2025, with the first hear­ing set for 19 Jan­u­ary 2026, and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Grant Tay­lor de­scribed a “per­fect storm” that led to clo­sure.

I learnt some of my hard­est pub­lish­ing lessons in Trinidad and tried to car­ry them in­to Ja­maica. Back in the 1980s, I con­sult­ed for the Trinidad Ex­press when it de­cid­ed to move from what old hands would call a “bas­tard tabloid” to­wards a more se­ri­ous for­mat, in di­rect com­pe­ti­tion with the broad­sheet T&T Guardian. Even then, you could see the long arc. At some point, at least one play­er would come un­der se­vere pres­sure. And News­day was not the on­ly “third pa­per” ex­per­i­ment. The In­de­pen­dent died on the vine, was ab­sorbed by the Ex­press, and then shut­tered, a qui­et re­minder that the mar­ket pun­ish­es sen­ti­ment.

At their height, T&T’s big dailies moved num­bers that sound myth­i­cal now. The Ex­press once print­ed well over 100,000 on week­days and more on Sun­days, while the Guardian was ahead of them. Those days have been gone for a long time. Ja­maica tells a sim­i­lar sto­ry. The Glean­er and the Ob­serv­er are not what they were in their ear­ly years, and the old as­sump­tions about print dom­i­nance have been over­tak­en by the new re­al­i­ty: the dai­ly pa­per is no longer the de­fault pur­chase in the morn­ing rou­tine.

That is why I ar­gued years ago that it can be­come cheap­er to give the pa­per away than to keep tak­ing bites out of ad­ver­tis­ing rev­enue to sub­sidise dis­tri­b­u­tion. Street sales, in par­tic­u­lar, are a cost­ly throw­back. You push pa­pers in­to an in­ef­fi­cient, leaky sys­tem in an en­vi­ron­ment where con­sumer pri­or­i­ties shift by the tide: do I buy the pa­per or pam­pers? Mean­while, un­sold copies lan­guish in shops and petrol sta­tions, dis­tort­ing the mea­sure­ment of re­al sales and mask­ing the truth from de­ci­sion mak­ers.

I once vis­it­ed a min­istry in Kingston and was star­tled to see that the min­is­ter’s of­fice bought a sin­gle news­pa­per, which was then shared. The point is not to em­bar­rass any­one. It is to il­lus­trate a broad­er be­hav­iour­al shift. If a ma­jor pub­lic of­fice is op­er­at­ing on one copy, what does that say about the wider mar­ket, and about how much con­fi­dence we can have in tra­di­tion­al dis­tri­b­u­tion as­sump­tions?

I rec­om­mend­ed tar­get­ing high­er net worth read­ers, those in con­dos and gat­ed com­mu­ni­ties, on­ly to run in­to the re­al­i­ties of ac­cess, se­cu­ri­ty, and the un­der­stand­able re­luc­tance to mount labour in­ten­sive can­vass­ing in a shrink­ing mar­ket. So yes, the Tri­ni “free sheet” in­stinct is not mad­ness. It is triage. Give it away, strate­gi­cal­ly, while you mi­grate the au­di­ence on­line.

But here is the sec­ond trap. Even when you do the “right” thing and piv­ot dig­i­tal, ad­ver­tis­ers of­ten refuse to pay com­pa­ra­ble rates for on­line in­ven­to­ry. Agen­cies are thin­ning out, and com­pa­nies have been con­di­tioned by plat­form pric­ing to see dig­i­tal as cheap by de­fault. In T&T, the Guardian re­port on News­day’s clo­sure put blunt num­bers to the pain, re­port­ing a steep fall in print ad­ver­tis­ing over the last decade, along­side ris­ing costs and read­er sen­si­tiv­i­ty to price. This is the val­ley very few pub­lish­ers can cross with­out pa­tient cap­i­tal.

That brings me to Ja­maica’s re­cent move. The Glean­er and the Ob­serv­er fi­nal­ly did what Gary Allen and I were ar­gu­ing for years ago: con­sol­i­date the cost­ly back end, while keep­ing ed­i­to­r­i­al and cor­po­rate iden­ti­ties sep­a­rate. North Beech Lim­it­ed com­menced op­er­a­tions on De­cem­ber 22, 2025, tak­ing over print­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion for both hous­es’ print prod­ucts, fol­low­ing the Au­gust 2025 mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing. It is a ra­tio­nal re­sponse, but it is al­so late, and late­ness in this busi­ness is ex­pen­sive. In Bridgetown and Port-of-Spain there was a shar­ing of newsprint pur­chas­es for decades that al­so ben­e­fit­ed pub­lish­ers in Guyana and St Lu­cia.

Now, a wider warn­ing.

The elec­tron­ic me­dia is not far be­hind. Just look at what is hap­pen­ing in the Unit­ed States. The change is un­fold­ing in re­al time on tele­vi­sion screens, and it is as un­stop­pable as the rapid de­ploy­ment of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence.

Start with view­ing be­hav­iour. Nielsen re­port­ed that in May 2025, stream­ing reached 44.8 per cent of to­tal tele­vi­sion us­age in the Unit­ed States, sur­pass­ing the com­bined share of broad­cast and ca­ble for the first time. That is not a small wob­ble in the rat­ings. It is a struc­tur­al shift in how au­di­ences be­have, which means a struc­tur­al shift in how ad­ver­tis­ers al­lo­cate mon­ey.

Then look at the news­room econ­o­my in­side tele­vi­sion it­self. The RTD­NA sur­vey re­port­ed lo­cal TV news em­ploy­ment in the Unit­ed States down in 2024, and not­ed the wave of lay­offs across ma­jor sta­tion groups dur­ing 2025. Less staff, few­er beats, more churn, more re­liance on wire copy and tem­plat­ed con­tent, and greater pres­sure to pro­duce “more” for every plat­form with few­er peo­ple.

At the same time, the cen­tre of grav­i­ty is mov­ing from lega­cy in­sti­tu­tions to in­de­pen­dents. The Guardian re­cent­ly pro­filed the rise of in­de­pen­dent, read­er-fund­ed jour­nal­ism on plat­forms like Sub­stack, ar­gu­ing that many cre­ators are build­ing re­silient au­di­ences out­side cor­po­rate news­rooms, of­ten be­cause lega­cy out­lets are shrink­ing or pulling back from cov­er­age ar­eas that mat­ter to com­mu­ni­ties.

And then there is the ac­cel­er­ant. AI is speed­ing up every part of the process, from how con­tent is pro­duced, to how it is pack­aged, to how it is dis­trib­uted and dis­cov­ered. Nie­man Lab cap­tured the mood plain­ly: lay­offs and AI are re­shap­ing the in­dus­try, and the com­pet­i­tive bat­tle­field is in­creas­ing­ly on­line.

So what does a sur­viv­able mod­el look like now for Caribbean lega­cy pub­lish­ers and broad­cast­ers?

1. Shared in­fra­struc­ture where it makes sense

2. If print­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion can be con­sol­i­dat­ed with­out di­lut­ing ed­i­to­r­i­al in­de­pen­dence, do it ear­ly, not late. The same log­ic in­creas­ing­ly ap­plies to mas­ter con­trol, trans­mis­sion, play­out, and even some back of­fice op­er­a­tions in broad­cast.

3. Mem­ber­ship rev­enue, not wish­ful sub­scrip­tions

4. Do not sell “the same pro­gramme, but on­line.” Build mem­ber­ship around ac­cess, util­i­ty, trust, and com­mu­ni­ty: brief­in­gs, ex­plain­ers, archives, spe­cial newslet­ters, di­as­po­ra bun­dles, and live con­ver­sa­tions that peo­ple will pay for be­cause they save time and add clar­i­ty.

5. Ser­vices as bal­last

6. Use the in­sti­tu­tion’s as­sets, re­port­ing net­works, archives, pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty, con­ven­ing pow­er, to gen­er­ate busi­ness rev­enue: events, spon­sored ver­ti­cals with clear ed­i­to­r­i­al walls, train­ing, com­mis­sioned re­search briefs, brand­ed con­tent done trans­par­ent­ly, and pro­duc­tion ser­vices.

The hard truth is this: with­out deep pock­ets, the tran­si­tion from lega­cy mod­els to new ones can look like com­mer­cial self harm. That is why News­day’s wind-up is not just a Trinidad head­line. It is a warn­ing to every stand­alone pub­lish­er, and frankly, to every stand­alone broad­cast­er too.

The on­ly ques­tion now is whether we cross the bridge de­lib­er­ate­ly, with dis­ci­pline and imag­i­na­tion, or whether we are forced across by the next “per­fect storm.”

Ju­lian Rogers is a Caribbean broad­cast­er/jour­nal­ist and a for­mer man­ag­ing ed­i­tor of Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed.