The land of BST, lamas and printing dramas!

When the Bhutan Observer’s Annual General Meeting rolled around I hadn't heard about BST (Bhutan Stretchable Time). So when I arrived in the office at 9:10 for the 9:00am meeting I expected to be met by 50 pairs of Bhutanese eyes staring back at me. Instead, the room was empty.  It wasn’t until about 9:50 that my colleagues began to wander in and at 10:10 the meeting finally got underway.


The meeting gave me an insight into the challenges that the newspaper is facing.  Sustainability and funding were recurring topics. But the most difficult problem facing the Observer at the moment is the drama over the printing press.  The amount of heated arguments  that this issue has caused could fill an entire series of a Bollywood soap drama .


Since I arrived in Bhutan, the Observer has usually managed to be ready for distribution by late Friday evening. Unfortunately the intended publication time is Friday morning. The late publication has huge ramifications for the paper and affects everyone from the advertisers to the reporters and also the readers. 


The process is made even more difficult when there’s a special supplement for a national celebration (and there are plenty in Bhutan) such as the 4th King’s birthday, 5th King’s birthday, Coronation Anniversary, Descending Day Of Lord Buddha etc. etc. So on the Anniversary of the 5th King’s Coronation I went to the printing press with Tashi to help compile the newspaper. The printing press is a tiny building with one printing machine that and a ladder that goes upstairs to an upper level where about half a dozen women put the paper together by hand. As I discovered, this is quite a tedious process! There is also issues with the quality of the printing. In fact, last week the copy of the Observer that was distributed to BICMA (Bhutan’s Information, Communications and Media Authority) had three blank pages and the wrong date on the cover. Needless to say, management was less than impressed. 

Putting together the paper at the printing press 

Solving this dilemma is vital to the future of the Observer.  Management is working hard to find a solution. In a country where the printing press is a relatively small industry there are few alternatives. One potentially viable option would be to print at the government owned Kuensel printing press but again financial issues are a major consideration. Another possibility that’s in the works at the moment is the establishment of a printing press in cooperation with some of the other private newspapers. This could be a lucrative commercial venture if the print media continues to grow as quickly as it has in the past two years!