By George Esunge Fominyen
Regular buyers of daily newspapers in Cameroon noticed on 1 July 2008 that they had to spend an extra 100 FCFA at the newsstands for their favourite paper. Instead of 300 FCFA a copy of Mutations, Messager or Le Jour now sells at 400 FCFA. 
This decision by newspaper publishers is supposed to help them measure up to the costs of production. In fact, since the 2007 finance law that cut the little existing exonerations on imports for material for media production, newspaper owners had consistently threatened to increase the price of their product. The current morose world economic situation and the steep rise in the cost of production surely got them to match words with action.
Some newspapers like Mutations reported that the move was not well received by the readers. The already low sales plummeted upon the increase. The happy few happened to be the owners of newspaper kiosks and street vendors who felt they would now be able to make better albeit small profit from the business.
Implications on Rumour-mongering
A drop in readership due to this price increase has more implications than meets the idea. Already Cameroonians are not avid readers. This means the reading public would only grow smaller. With fewer people reading, the informed class only thins out more and more. It could be catastrophic for a developing nation like Cameroon.
In a country where access to information is limited and where official government communication is scarcer than blood oozing out of a stone, the rumour mill has over the years been the main communication media in Cameroon. A reading of Francis B. Nyamnjoh’s Africa's Media, Democracy and the Politics of Belonging in which the author lists the 10 most notable rumours in the country would confirm how much this has been a truly working media in the Cameroon context. For instance, it was rumoured that the Lake Nyos disaster of 21 August 1986 was not the due to leakage of deadly gases from the lake but rather the testing of a neutron bomb by the Israelis. It was also rumoured that when first lady Jeanne Irene Biya died on 29 July 1992, in the absence of her husband, who was in Dakar at a meeting, it was President Biya that had arranged for her to be killed and had left the country (for a meeting where his presence was not mandatory) as an alibi.
The boiling tensions of the return to multiparty politics in the 1990s within a controlled media set-up also enhanced the development of rumours. The growing private media landscape that followed helped to re-channel that over-dependence on gossip. An increase in the price of newspapers as is the case would at best mean over reliance on the fledgling private radio and TV media in the country, while the web works its way into local habits as another if not freer and wider source of information. At worst, it may signal a return to the old ways of “I hear say; dem say; and on a dit que...”
Implications of price increase on the press and journalism
A diplomat once described the Cameroonian press as “varied and at worse scurrilous”. This is definitely not a glowing tribute to our journalists but it could very easily be proven if one bars about 3 or 4 really hard working newspapers in the country. If the price for a paper goes up to 400 FCFA it is evident that the press must be able to deliver more than what they do now for consumers to stick with them. Why on earth should a heavily indebted and poor Cameroonian spend hard earned money (in a country where the minimum wage is a shabby 28 000 FCFA) on buying a paper with the same rumours he would ordinarily hear while having a bottle of beer in a bar with mates (an additional incentive).
What this means is that, newspaper editors and publishers have to work harder to provide readers with more in-depth and analytical stories raising angles and insights to issues that are of general relevance but are not obvious to all. For instance, how many Cameroonian papers sent reporters to Bakassi to stay there for at least a two weeks to investigate the recent incidents there? They have more or less dished out the same “corner of the street” speculations that anyone could measurably contend. Others have developed farcical theories that are not worth the papers they are printed on.
Improved journalism that is relevant to the people and provokes social change is expected from the media now or they would not only lose readership but completely crash as businesses. Of course, good journalism needs financial in-puts which newspapers in Cameroon like in most African countries do not have. But good journalism still needs to be practiced; much so when the cost of a newspaper
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