Tough year for The Insider

Having been slapped with our first, and so far only, lawsuit towards the end of last year, 1992 was a very tough year for The Insider. Production costs went up by more than 70 percent between December and January forcing us to suspend printing of paper with effect from March.

The high production costs also forced us to change the distribution of the paper from one selling on the streets and in bookstores to a subscription only newsletter. This helped reduce costs drastically but it was not good enough to make up for the losses we had accumulated since the launching of the paper.

Because of the escalating debt, we at one time, thought of discontinuing publication. Even our financial advisors recommended that but pressure from our subscribers who continued to support our poor reproduction for six issues forced us to continue. Because of this tremendous support we decided to revert to printing. This was not, however, because our financial position had improved but simply because we felt our subscribers deserved a better paper.

We are still facing the same problem and it can only be solved if we increase our subscription base significantly. The lawsuit which resulted from a story we published in March 1991 about a tender racket in the Post and Telecommunications Corporation still stands.

In that story we reported that some PTC employees were granting tenders to non-existent companies which they were allegedly linked to. Although the lawsuit was initiated in May 1991 after we refused to retract our story, it has up to now not progressed beyond “notice of discovery” stage.

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