Standing on one of the sidewalks of Avenue Malick Sy, near the Medina district, a man scrutinizes the incessant ballet of vehicles that travel the road.
Every day, as soon as the sun rises, he performs the same gestures. He shows off the tabloids, the “suns”, the generic name that he and his colleagues give to all the Dakar tabloids. A habit that dates back to the time when the national daily “Le Soleil” was practically the only daily to appear in Senegal and which has remained since then among many newspaper vendors.
The man clutches a pile of newspapers under his arm and holds a small batch that he displays with his hand to attract the curiosity of passers-by and motorists.
The old man keeps chanting: “Read the news, you have to read.”
But here, it’s a case of luck. Because while some drivers sometimes stop to buy newspapers, others often turn a deaf ear and continue on their way without even a glance.
“Newspaper sales are now reduced to a customer business. Only regulars buy,” he says, looking dejected.
Currently, he adds, “only those who love the written press buy newspapers. These young people I see there no longer read. Reading is a question of habit. And most of them do not have this habit. If it is only with them, the decline of the written press is guaranteed.”
Coronavirus, an aggravating factor
The old newsagent says that it was the period of the health crisis linked to the coronavirus that aggravated the situation, the symptoms of which have continued to worsen with the unprecedented rise of new information and communication technologies. Forced into confinement, regular readers had deserted the newsstands to fall back on the online press and social networks.
With the explosion of online news sites, the printed press has seen a good portion of its readers change their habits.
But not all have succumbed to this new trend. According to Samba Watt, some of them still remain loyal readers and continue to buy the daily newspapers, just like in the good old days.
Khalifa Dramé belongs to this category of readers who have remained assiduous. Claiming to be from the old generation, he says “he doesn’t find himself with digital.”
“What is digital can be good, but it does not give me the feeling of reading. With paper, I retain what I read, my concentration increases. I am very nostalgic for all that, I do not want it to disappear,” he argues, holding a dozen daily newspapers in one of his hands.
The danger of digital, he says, is that things are fleeting, notwithstanding the disappearance of jobs.
Drastic drop in daily sales
Newspaper seller Ndongo Ndiaye says his daily sales have “hit rock bottom.”
“There is only a clientele made up of elderly people. The rest have found the solution in applications,” he tries to explain.
Nicknamed Papi because of his advanced age, this newspaper seller considers the public’s disinterest in printed media as a serious warning.
It is a “warning of the strict need to reinvent and reconcile the written press with the public,” believes Papi, based at the Keur-Massar roundabout in the suburbs of Dakar.
But it is also a “warning of the urgency of leaving this miserable life of an unhappy merchant, before perishing with the sun that I have promoted for ages”, the old salesman almost warns, his hair disheveled, a consequence of the wind that blows almost non-stop.
Yves Ndong, a former municipal agent turned newspaper seller, confides that his clientele has shrunk like shagreen leather. Only the most loyal of the faithful have remained. These are the customers to whom he delivers the newspapers every day at dawn, he specifies.
“Apart from these, I don’t earn much on the street or in the kiosks I frequent,” confesses the soon-to-be sixty-year-old.
“Sometimes, God is my witness, we are forced to return newspapers to suppliers who see this as a strategy on our part to extract money from them, when in fact this is only the result of poor sales performance,” he laments.
While she notes this development, Mai Saliou, a young student met near the Cheikh Anta Diop University (UCAD) in Dakar, does not seem to be very moved by it. Mai Saliou does not hide her penchant for the digital press, which she praises for its practicality and simplicity.
According to a journalist who requested anonymity, a number of factors could explain this drop in newspaper sales.
He cites, first of all, the emergence of news sites and the illiteracy rate. Added to this, he says, is a lack of interest in reading, the sensationalist bias of certain headlines and the lack of quality.
He also points to a very inefficient distribution system and a readership concentrated in urban areas.
APS
