Blast newspaper folds
Without a whimper, the Blast weekly newspaper went out of business recently.
The 25-year-old newspaper was a victim of changing times in the media, suffering from a terminal case of falling circulation and advertising sales.
Rabindranath Maharaj, part-owner, had confided late last year that business was extremely bad and would get worse in 2009.
People were not buying the paper that he and yellow journalism guru, the late Irwin Sandy founded around 1984 when they both broke with the Bomb.
The Blast outsold the other weeklies in the 1990s when it began premiering episodes of the soaps such as Young and Restless, The Bold and the Beautiful etc.
The dailies soon copied this technique, doing it on a daily basis.
The newspaper began with lurid, sensational stories and at one time had the likes of senior journalists Nizam Ali and his brother, Ramjohn, Eustace Ward, Horace Gordon and Leonard Joseph in its stables.
However, the expansion of the electronic media and the introduction of cable television and the Internet have dealt the weekly newspaper industry a mortal blow.
The remaining weeklies are barely hanging on, afflicted with the same incurable ailment of dwindling circulation and plunging advertising revenue.
Over the years, the Independent, Superstar, Probe, Flava are among the weeklies that have folded. Evening papers, The Evening News, The Sun and The Wire have also bit the dust.
Six years ago, the newspaper moved from Chootoo Trace, El Socorro Extension Road, San Juan, to its present location in Frederick Settlement, Caroni, where a new press was installed.
Full colour printing and brighter pages have not worked.
Maharaj, younger brother of former Attorney General Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj, could not be contacted for comment nor was the newspaper’s other principal, Peter Morales, who is recuperating from cancer surgery, available.
In Curepe, where the Chookolingo press has joined Sat Maharaj’s Bomb people are placing bets on the next casualty.