By Michael Spence
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Michael Spence
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The Gleaner was not just a newspaper. It began in 1834 as part of the intellectual liberation/emancipation movement of Jamaica.
Founded by two DeCordova brothers and one Ashenheim—all Jewish—as our people were stepping from plantation slavery to freedom. For years, the Gleaner had a literal monopoly on news across Jamaica.
As a rural youth in Bethel Town, Westmoreland—a Baptist Free Village 1837—the Gleaner arrived at the post office. That post office was our nerve centre. Letters, telegrams, remittances, parcels from abroad. That was how we connected to the world.
No digital equipment such as computers. cell phone. There were a handful of landlines. We has a more civilized people living together harmoniously in peace, with little.
When my father died in 1988, my aunt Lucille got the telegram in Kingston so late that she arrived for the funeral in Bethel Town a day later. She returned to Kingston broken-hearted and died days later. I attended her funeral.
That same post office was blown away by Hurricane Melissa a year ago. Snail-paced moves to replace it. The elderly and the infirm are esperience the most suffering.
And now the Gleaner itself is perishing.
Every time you try to read it on your phone, you are blocked — pay subscription. So people just scroll on. Gleaner becomes more ignored, more irrelevant, on its way to extinction.
We need a rescue plan:
- Glean Blog. Glean TikTok.
- Glean Tube. News Tok.
- Bake News
Fill the vacuum for credible news now taken over by vulgar, incredible "Nasty Mouthism."
North Street should have been a Gleaner Media University. Is it too late? Or is there still a chance for an Observer Media and Hospitality University — or Butch Stewart University?
Now it's allegedly gone to a cloth/security company—part of the legitimate sector in the lucrative crime industry.
Can we buy it back? Relocate? The Gleaner is not just history. It holds significant repositories.
I hope all Jamaicans, locally and in the diaspora the directors and managers, are reading/listening and prepared to act.
Michael Spence
Michael Spence is a graduate of Cornwall College and the University of the West Indies. He is a trained teacher, a sociologist, and a writer for Bark Di Trute.
Micspen2@hotmail.com
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