A Chin daily newspaper called ‘Chin Thuthang’ in Falam language had stopped from 1st June because of financial problem to publish though it has been published since 2015, based in Kalaymyo, Sagaing region in Myanmar.
Salai DL Senling, editor of Chin Thuthang said that the newspaper has been published from last two years without any financial support from outsiders. But now they have faced financial problem and the rapid development of Social Media.
“Facebook is the main reason, stopping our daily newspaper as it is very fast in news updating and people are reading the update news from facebook, then they have less interest in reading print newspaper. Another reason is that financial problem. As we cannot appoint reporters, we had relied on internet, but our translated news cannot up to date; because people had already red the news from online,” he said.
The Chin Thuthang daily newspaper had been published by Chin Youth Counseling with four staff in Tahan block, Kalaymyo. It used to publish from every Tuesday to Saturday, five days in a week with 900-1000 copies per day, and it costs about Ks. 60000. We spent Ks. 1200000-1300000 per a month, but the income was only 900000 Kyats in a month. It means that we lost Ks. 300000 in every month, he added.
Chin Thuthang newspaper is a member of Chin Media Network with 16 media groups. In regards of this, Salai Hung Tun Gei, executive director of CMN said, “It is very sad to hear the discontinuing Chin Thuthang newspaper after they had overcome many obstacles. The government has responsibility for Chin media sustainable by giving government’s advertisements like calling work tenders, jobs and public announcements, though we had discussed twice, it failed till day.”
There are 3 daily newspapers and 10 bi-monthly or monthly newspapers in Chin state currently.