I salute The New Vision on the printing press

Apr 06, 2010

I read from afar the news of The New Vision switching on the new printing press that can “spit out” 64 pages of colour at a rate of 40,000 copies an hour and was highly impressed and deeply satisfied.

Joachim Buwembo

I read from afar the news of The New Vision switching on the new printing press that can “spit out” 64 pages of colour at a rate of 40,000 copies an hour and was highly impressed and deeply satisfied.

As an ‘OB’ of the great company, I proudly congratulate you and all The New Vision staff and management on this major stuff in your continuous efforts to innovate and keep up with the demands of a rapidly changing technological and economic environment. But as a Ugandan, I was disturbed reading on the same Monday edition that the long awaited national IT backbone is being laid using questionable materials.

Can The New Vision keep this matter alive so that a few officials, incompetent at best or corrupt at worst, do not deny the rest of our people from benefitting from IT revolution.

We would be like a society that went through the 20th Century without accessing electricity, motorised transport and penicillin.

I recall when I joined The New Vision as the Sunday Vision editor in 1997 and vowed to start printing the front and sports pages in full colour, then a novelty in Uganda.

In a protracted process that involved taking photos to John Katto’s colour separation outfit on Nkrumah Road, bringing back the four films per photo to be fitted on only part of the page. Around that time, Barbara Kaija was in the UK during the passing of Princess Diana, and she was filing material which we were determined to run the same day — we had just introduced the early weekend editions — despite the time difference that placed her three hours behind us. But we somehow accomplished the feat, which your young sub-editor now only does with a click of a mouse. Quite a long way The New Vision has come in 13 years.

I once again salute The New Vision board, management and staff on this momentous achievement.

What a wonderful place Uganda would be if all sectors kept up such a pace of innovation and financial discipline.
The writer is a journalist and retired editor

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});