Society

As newspaper fetes 50th anniversary: Pioneer coordinator, Fame Ndongo, says Cameroon Tribune was a gamble.

Prof Fame Ndongo: Pioneer Editorial Coordinator, Cameroon Tribune

The pioneer Editorial Coordinator of the national bilingual daily newspaper, Cameroon Tribune, Prof Jacques Fame Ndongo, has said the project launched 50 years ago was a gamble that has turned out to be great.
Minister Fame Ndongo made the observation in an interview he granted Cameroon Tribune.

In the interview published on Monday July 1, as the newspaper began celebrating its milestone in the last five decades, Prof Fame Ndongo, now Minister of State, Minister of Higher Education, looked back in nostalgia at the old good days.

He said: “It was a challenge, a gamble, a great adventure. It was a gamble; to offer the public an attractive and aesthetic product (a 12-page daily newspaper, 4 pages in English and 8 in French) underpinned by truth, objectivity and loyalty to the institutions of the Republic”.

Minister Fame Ndongo further underscored the risk they also faced having to work in a context of the one-party state, “not forgetting the sword of Damocles” that hanged “over our heads not to deviate one iota from the editorial line of Cameroon Tribune”.

The pioneer Editorial Coordinator also said in 1971 when they were the ones calling the shots, “there was no Internet, no computers, no photocopiers”.

File photo of young Fame Ndongo as Cameroon Tribune pioneer Editorial Coordinator

He nonetheless reiterated that: “It was the good old days of typography”, before questioning: “Who today knows what the word typometer means?”

He indicated that people below 50 years of age can’t get a good grasp of the era he is revisiting but noted that in 50 years, Cameroon Tribune has witnessed growth at “an exponential rate”.

Prof Fame Ndongo rated the growth of the newspaper as “an extraordinary and fascinating addition to the world of the press”.

“But, as Anatole France would say, ‘changes, even the most desirable, always have their melancholy’. Tell me about a dream...," he said.

Back in the days when he and a few others managed Cameroon Tribune, Prof Fame Ndongo, said: "We were young, we were frail, we were passionate. We were crazy. We loved journalism. And it was good to us. We were stars...without big heads. The leitmotif was lapidary and binary; responsibility and maturity, despite our young age”.

He said it was a time when most of them had just returned to Cameroon from renowned foreign institutions to set the stage for what Cameroon Tribune is today.

"The opportunity was beautiful, we had to cherish it...," the minister remarked.

By Dinayen Dorcas Kongla & Ateba Nzelle Zinna (Journalism students on internship)

This story was first published in The Guardian Post issue N0: 3158 of Thursday July 4, 2024