"Excuse me, Sir. Would you like to buy a newspaper?"
Probably not, if my recent experience is correct. I've informally started my research for a paper about "What there is to read in Tete". I spent a morning walking the streets and popping into each and every shop to ask for reading material. Since some shops have quite a random selection of inventory, I just went ahead and asked no matter what I saw on the shelves. I was the weird white lady for sure that day! (I also had some personal shopping to do, so I asked repeatedly for an electric coffee grinder- I was pretty sure that it wouldn't be on sale, but you just never know!)
An average visit to a shop went like this:
-Good morning, I'm looking for something to read. Do you sell any books or magazines or newspapers?
--No, check the shop over there, "Noticias" they have books.
-Do you know other places I can look for reading material? Like a library or something?
--I think there is a library, but I'm not sure where... There must be one, this is the capital city of the Province!
-Ok, thanks for your help.
So, I stopped in at "Noticias." This is a shop that sells stationery, does photocopies and has a selection of books in the window. All of them are school books: text books required for the 8th-12th grades and a few post secondary courses as well. "Noticias" is actually the distribution center for the main national newspaper in Mozambique. A good place to start looking for something to read.
The manager was very helpful. She took the time to look up information for me on subscriptions to the daily paper and sales records for the daily and weekly papers. Now, we are looking at a Province with a projected population of 2,137,700 people in 2011. How many daily subscriptions would you expect?
There are, in fact, 250 subscribers to the daily paper. Of course, the paper is also on sale at the post office, a news stand, and a few guys sometimes sell them on the streets. Bundles are shipped out to the districts so there is a possibility of covering the province quite well every few days or so. How many daily papers per week get sold? 1740 on average... 25% in the dsitricts so thee bulk of papers are sold in Tete City.
There are 8 newspapers delivered daily to the post office for sale at the counter. Some days all are sold out "if it is really good news" and some days only 3 are sold. The papers are left on display for the week and then they are collected by the "Noticias" staff.
There are also "Domingo" the Sunday paper... about 70 are sold in Tete Province every week. And there is the BIG seller, "Desafio", the sports weekly that comes out on Saturdays. They get in 400 papers a week and they sell them all every week!
So, what conclusions do I draw from this information? Either no one expects to find interesting information in a daily newspaper in Tete or they might not be able to pay the 20mt for the newspaper. People interested in Sports are willing to pay for the news. I did manage to ask some young people how much they would be willing to spend on a magazine that intrested them. They said that about 100-150 mts seemed reasonable. So far, I'm seeing magazines for sale at about 300mts. Out of range for the kind of person I interviewed on Wednesday last week.
I need to check out the other national newspaper distributer in Tete, "Diario". I've heard that it might even be a more popular paper than the "Noticias". I'll get back to you on that one.
On a side note, there were a few months last year when a local city paper was published! It was named "Calowera" after the mountain at the entrance of town. I believe they published for about 10 weeks. In that time I manages to buy the paper only once. I couldn't find where it was sold, but had heard about it.
Well, I covered about 500m of shops that day. I only have about 2000m to go! Tete isn't a very big town. We have only about 16 square city blocks of commercial space in town. That is way bigger than surrounding areas, so if they don't have it here, it probably isn't for sale anywhere. Books, newspapers and magazines... the search is on!
An average visit to a shop went like this:
-Good morning, I'm looking for something to read. Do you sell any books or magazines or newspapers?
--No, check the shop over there, "Noticias" they have books.
-Do you know other places I can look for reading material? Like a library or something?
--I think there is a library, but I'm not sure where... There must be one, this is the capital city of the Province!
-Ok, thanks for your help.
So, I stopped in at "Noticias." This is a shop that sells stationery, does photocopies and has a selection of books in the window. All of them are school books: text books required for the 8th-12th grades and a few post secondary courses as well. "Noticias" is actually the distribution center for the main national newspaper in Mozambique. A good place to start looking for something to read.
The manager was very helpful. She took the time to look up information for me on subscriptions to the daily paper and sales records for the daily and weekly papers. Now, we are looking at a Province with a projected population of 2,137,700 people in 2011. How many daily subscriptions would you expect?
There are, in fact, 250 subscribers to the daily paper. Of course, the paper is also on sale at the post office, a news stand, and a few guys sometimes sell them on the streets. Bundles are shipped out to the districts so there is a possibility of covering the province quite well every few days or so. How many daily papers per week get sold? 1740 on average... 25% in the dsitricts so thee bulk of papers are sold in Tete City.
There are 8 newspapers delivered daily to the post office for sale at the counter. Some days all are sold out "if it is really good news" and some days only 3 are sold. The papers are left on display for the week and then they are collected by the "Noticias" staff.
There are also "Domingo" the Sunday paper... about 70 are sold in Tete Province every week. And there is the BIG seller, "Desafio", the sports weekly that comes out on Saturdays. They get in 400 papers a week and they sell them all every week!
So, what conclusions do I draw from this information? Either no one expects to find interesting information in a daily newspaper in Tete or they might not be able to pay the 20mt for the newspaper. People interested in Sports are willing to pay for the news. I did manage to ask some young people how much they would be willing to spend on a magazine that intrested them. They said that about 100-150 mts seemed reasonable. So far, I'm seeing magazines for sale at about 300mts. Out of range for the kind of person I interviewed on Wednesday last week.
I need to check out the other national newspaper distributer in Tete, "Diario". I've heard that it might even be a more popular paper than the "Noticias". I'll get back to you on that one.
On a side note, there were a few months last year when a local city paper was published! It was named "Calowera" after the mountain at the entrance of town. I believe they published for about 10 weeks. In that time I manages to buy the paper only once. I couldn't find where it was sold, but had heard about it.
Well, I covered about 500m of shops that day. I only have about 2000m to go! Tete isn't a very big town. We have only about 16 square city blocks of commercial space in town. That is way bigger than surrounding areas, so if they don't have it here, it probably isn't for sale anywhere. Books, newspapers and magazines... the search is on!
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