Work, Persistence, Creativity
Getting a Newspaper Off the Ground

By Robin McDowell
Tthe cambodia daily

Matthew Roberts/The Cambodia Daily James Kanter (at top), Matthew Roberts (left) and Robin McDowell (bottom) work on the Daily in the Renakse Hotel in December 1993.

When Barton Biggs and I arrived in Phnom Penh in 1993, just a few weeks ahead of the paper’s Aug 20 launch, we were told by many people the project was doomed to fail.

Cambodia didn’t need an English-language daily, they said, especially with UN peacekeepers on the way out. We’d never be able to find a printer who would work all night, others said, or a way to get it delivered.

What about advertisers—how did we expect to keep it afloat? Through sheer persistence, and creative thinking, publisher Bernie Krisher found solutions to all these problems and more.
There was still the question of reporters. The Daily was supposed to be a training ground for journalists, but it was true, we were really starting from scratch.

Those we hired included a motorcycle taxi driver, a former police investigator and a “pagoda boy.”

There were times Barton and I both wondered, really, how was this going to work? Operating on four to five hours of sleep, we struggled just to get a paper out every day. Rarely were we able to get out of the office.

But somehow this crop of new Cambodian reporters made it all happen.

They arrived at 7 am and spent the day gathering news. By the time they finished (painfully at first) typing their stories into the computer it was often 11 pm. Finally, with no questions looming or late-night phone calls needed to be made, one after another would turn to us and say, “OK then, I would like to say goodnight.”

When I return to Phnom Penh now, usually for just a few hectic days at a time, I run into this same group of early Daily reporters.
With the exception of the ever-loyal Lor Chandara (and how lucky The Cambodia Daily is to have him after all these years) they have spread their wings: Ek Madra works for Reuters, Vong Sokheng for the Phnom Penh Post, Chheang Sopheng for Deutsche Presse-Agentur, Chea Sothecheath and To Serey for Radio Free Asia in Bangkok and Phnom Penh.

Even I’m surprised...it turned out to be a training ground after all.
The core team that put together the Khmer section—Pin Sisovann, Pol Meanith, Chev Bunny and Kim Thy—are still there.
They, and their colleagues, have doubled its size to eight pages turning the Khmer version into a paper in its own right, which reaches people the English Daily never could.

So, yes, it’s been a great 10 years, and I’m proud to have been a part of it. May there be another 10, make that 100, years ahead.