By KELVIN KACHINGWE
IN A year that the Zambia Daily Mail scored a first by launching its first editorial policy since the newspaper was established in 1960, it received a number of officials ranging from chief executive officers and ambassadors to students and celebrities.
Each of these visits yielded some major pronouncements.
For instance, the visit by former Ministry of Information and Broadcasting Services permanent secretary Stephen Mwansa saw the launch of the Zambia Daily Mail editorial policy.
The visit by Barclays Bank Zambia acting head of corporate affairs Mike Erasmus saw the announcement of plans by the bank to launch a countrywide funding initiative for the agriculture sector.
The initiative is aimed at improving the agriculture sector in the country in terms of conservation farming in various farm blocks.
It was during the same visit that the Daily Mail announced that it would install a computer-to-plate (CtP) machine, which is the world’s leading technology for enhancing the pressroom’s productivity and efficiency.
For this newspaper, this is aimed at improving the quality of the newspaper and expanding the commercial printing business.
Soon after this announcement, Secretary to the Cabinet Roland Msiska visited the Zambia Daily Mail to launch the CtP at which he instructed all permanent secretaries to ensure payments for advertisements in the public media are made in advance.
Dr Msiska said he would send a circular to the Auditor-General to make it a financial offence for the departments to obtain services from the public media before paying for them.
But the launch of the editorial policy first!
For those new in town, the editorial policy is a tool journalists will adhere to and it will guide their work.
In the Daily Mail case, it says: “The Zambia Daily Mail newspaper commits itself to recognise, respect and uphold the highest possible professional and ethical conduct through good judgement of news.”
Mr Mwansa was optimistic that the editorial policy will be the point of reference when publishing stories while commending the company for coming up with its own standards and practices in enhancing professionalism.
However, it was not just senior government officials and the corporate world that visited the Zambia Daily Mail.
Swedish Ambassador to Zambia Lena Nordstrom, United States of America embassy charge d’affaires David Young, Chinese Ambassador to Zambia Zhou Yuxiao, European Union delegation, pupils from the International School of Lusaka, Zambian envoy to the 2013 Miss Earth Pageant held in the Philippines Winnie-Fredah Kabwe, journalists from the Sunday Mail of Zimbabwe and from China also paid courtesy calls on the Daily Mail.
During her visit, Ms Nordstrom advised Zambian journalists to focus their energies more on reporting issues rather than political parties.
Ms Nordstrom also commended Zambia for being a good and preferred destination for investment in Africa largely based on its peaceful and friendly people.
“I actually count myself lucky for getting Zambia as my first African posting after many years in Latin America,” Ms Nordstrom said. “This is a beautiful country, which stands out among many African countries as I have come to be told and personally learnt.”
On the media side, she said she got a sense of travelling around the country that most Zambians want to hear or read about plans Government is putting in place to create jobs, develop the economy, cut poverty and issues relating to promoting entrepreneurship.
“People are more concerned about hearing issues that affect them such as job creation, empowerment as well as economic development, and not the happenings in political parties and individuals.
“Swedish politicians would be happy to be here because it means they would be more in the paper as they are not given such time by our media,” she said.
And during his visit, Mr Young revealed that he selected Zambia as his first choice to work in Africa because of its friendly and warm work environment.
“I am happy to say that I have been in Zambia and Africa for four months and it is a privilege to be here. For my family and I, this was the first choice we made to serve when we decided to come to southern Africa. We looked around and we are thrilled that we are here,” he said.
And during his visit last week, the Chinese envoy advised Zambia to embrace science and technology in order to realise the economic potential of its natural resource endowment. He said Zambia should advance science and technology to convert natural resources such as copper into finished products.
“It is a waste of time to train professionals that are not creative or have no use for technology. People should be creative, especially if natural resources are available. Scientists must be produced.
“It is high time Zambia started using its abundant water to produce more power for export. Zambia should not be experiencing power cuts because it just needs people to work hard and turn natural resources into development,” Mr Zhou said.
Another major highlight was the hosting of a delegation of journalists from leading Chinese print media, who called on the Zambia Daily Mail managing director, Anthony Mukwita.
Mr Mukwita told the journalists that the company is determined to become the best-selling newspaper in the country by next year and is working round-the-clock to ensure the newspaper has a national presence by the first quarter of next year.
“We are revolutionising the Zambia Daily Mail and we have come up with the Saturday Mail and Sunday Mail, respectively. The efforts we are undertaking are aimed at attracting more Zambian readers and advertisers,” he said.
Others that graced the newspaper are Airtel managing director Charity Lumpa, who expressed a deep desire to directly work with the newspaper.
That is why the Zambia Daily Mail has left its doors open to the public, as it also tries to showcase the various developmental projects the Government is undertaking as per campaign promises.
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