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Rev Garnett Roper heads new investor group
By Desmond Allen Executive Editor - Operations specialcoverageunit@jamaicaobserver.com
Monday, February 23, 2009
THE weekly Sunday Herald newspaper has been taken over by a group of investors headed by the Rev Garnett Roper, who hope to salvage the latest journal headed for Jamaica's fearsome newspaper graveyard.
ROPER... we want the Herald to remain a strong independent third paper
Christene King and Desmond Richards, the principals behind New Media Communications which has published the Sunday Herald for the past 11 years, were immediately employed in their previous positions as executive editor and managing editor respectively.
The buyout followed a protracted dispute with the tax authorities over an estimated $145.8 million in taxes and statutory deductions, in which the newspaper unsuccessfully appealed to the Finance Ministry for a partial write off.
"We want the Herald to remain a strong independent third paper committed to its vigorous brand of journalism which no other paper is offering," said Roper, the controversial preacher and talkshow host who chairs New Generation Publishers, the new owners.
Roper declined to name the new investors, saying he would leave it up to them to identify themselves. But reliable Observer sources gave their names as Peter Bunting, Chris Dehring, Mark Golding and Roper.
Apparently unaware of the sale, the Inland Revenue Department sent in a bailiff to the Herald's Norwood Avenue Kingston offices last Friday, only to be shown proof that equipment and furniture there had been sold to New Generation Publishers.
The sale also appeared to take original directors, Cliff Hughes and Franklyn McKnight by surprise.
RICHARDS... I am down but not out
"I want to make it clear that I did not know who the new investors were until last Friday when the bailiff went in," said Hughes, the CEO of Nationwide Radio.
"When I turned over my shares to the company (New Media Communications) last year, the names of the pending investors were not given to us. I was dealing with Desmond Richards and Christene King," he insisted.
McKnight who now runs the news department of Ocho Rios-based IRIE-FM, said he too did not know the names of the proposed investors when he turned over his shares to New Media.
"I was very unhappy with how things were turning out and I gave back my shares, without asking for one penny back," said McKnight.
Both Richards and King were philosophical about the sale of the newspaper they started with $50,000 and into which they had since pumped unquantifiable personal funds and hard time.
"I am very distressed, of course, but the fact that I still have an opportunity to continue doing what I love best gives me hope. I am down but not out and I am very optimistic about the future," said Richards, a former president of the Press Association of Jamaica.
King, a 36-year media veteran, said: "It is something that had to happen. It needed capital that we did not have. But I feel great about the work we have done over the years, and the sacrifice we put it. We will continue to build on that great legacy."
The buyout of the Sunday Herald brand, as Roper describes it, took place last December with little fanfare. It was the latest chapter in an uncertain story which started as the Jamaica Record, led by publisher, Mark Ricketts in 1987.
The Record, meant to break Jamaica's one-newspaper monopoly by filling the vacuum left by the Jamaica Daily News which folded after 10 years in 1983, itself went under on March 29, 1992. But on July 26 that same year, then chairman and publisher, Neville Blythe started the Jamaica Herald, with Franklyn McKnight as editor.
With the Herald haemorrhaging red ink, Blythe contracted the paper to a Sunday weekly, and when he contemplated shutting it down altogether, sold the Sunday Herald to a group, New Media Communications headed by former employees, Richards and King, in 1997.
Since last month, under new general manager, Newton Ramdial, the Sunday Herald has been printed at the Barbados Nation newspaper in Bridgetown, after seemingly unresolved dispute with the former printers, X-News.
Read the Observer tomorrow for the intriguing story of the rise and fall of the Sunday Herald; the fights at board meetings; claims of political interference and the battle with the Jamaican tax authorities.
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/...ERALD_SOLD.asp
By Desmond Allen Executive Editor - Operations specialcoverageunit@jamaicaobserver.com
Monday, February 23, 2009
THE weekly Sunday Herald newspaper has been taken over by a group of investors headed by the Rev Garnett Roper, who hope to salvage the latest journal headed for Jamaica's fearsome newspaper graveyard.
ROPER... we want the Herald to remain a strong independent third paper Christene King and Desmond Richards, the principals behind New Media Communications which has published the Sunday Herald for the past 11 years, were immediately employed in their previous positions as executive editor and managing editor respectively.
The buyout followed a protracted dispute with the tax authorities over an estimated $145.8 million in taxes and statutory deductions, in which the newspaper unsuccessfully appealed to the Finance Ministry for a partial write off.
"We want the Herald to remain a strong independent third paper committed to its vigorous brand of journalism which no other paper is offering," said Roper, the controversial preacher and talkshow host who chairs New Generation Publishers, the new owners.
Roper declined to name the new investors, saying he would leave it up to them to identify themselves. But reliable Observer sources gave their names as Peter Bunting, Chris Dehring, Mark Golding and Roper.
Apparently unaware of the sale, the Inland Revenue Department sent in a bailiff to the Herald's Norwood Avenue Kingston offices last Friday, only to be shown proof that equipment and furniture there had been sold to New Generation Publishers.
The sale also appeared to take original directors, Cliff Hughes and Franklyn McKnight by surprise.
RICHARDS... I am down but not out "I want to make it clear that I did not know who the new investors were until last Friday when the bailiff went in," said Hughes, the CEO of Nationwide Radio.
"When I turned over my shares to the company (New Media Communications) last year, the names of the pending investors were not given to us. I was dealing with Desmond Richards and Christene King," he insisted.
McKnight who now runs the news department of Ocho Rios-based IRIE-FM, said he too did not know the names of the proposed investors when he turned over his shares to New Media.
"I was very unhappy with how things were turning out and I gave back my shares, without asking for one penny back," said McKnight.
Both Richards and King were philosophical about the sale of the newspaper they started with $50,000 and into which they had since pumped unquantifiable personal funds and hard time.
"I am very distressed, of course, but the fact that I still have an opportunity to continue doing what I love best gives me hope. I am down but not out and I am very optimistic about the future," said Richards, a former president of the Press Association of Jamaica.
King, a 36-year media veteran, said: "It is something that had to happen. It needed capital that we did not have. But I feel great about the work we have done over the years, and the sacrifice we put it. We will continue to build on that great legacy."
The buyout of the Sunday Herald brand, as Roper describes it, took place last December with little fanfare. It was the latest chapter in an uncertain story which started as the Jamaica Record, led by publisher, Mark Ricketts in 1987.
The Record, meant to break Jamaica's one-newspaper monopoly by filling the vacuum left by the Jamaica Daily News which folded after 10 years in 1983, itself went under on March 29, 1992. But on July 26 that same year, then chairman and publisher, Neville Blythe started the Jamaica Herald, with Franklyn McKnight as editor.
With the Herald haemorrhaging red ink, Blythe contracted the paper to a Sunday weekly, and when he contemplated shutting it down altogether, sold the Sunday Herald to a group, New Media Communications headed by former employees, Richards and King, in 1997.
Since last month, under new general manager, Newton Ramdial, the Sunday Herald has been printed at the Barbados Nation newspaper in Bridgetown, after seemingly unresolved dispute with the former printers, X-News.
Read the Observer tomorrow for the intriguing story of the rise and fall of the Sunday Herald; the fights at board meetings; claims of political interference and the battle with the Jamaican tax authorities.
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/...ERALD_SOLD.asp
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