Cameroon Tribune At 50 : Epitome Of Resilience, Memory Keeping

Happy golden anniversary, Cameroon Tribune! Today is a historical date for the national bilingual daily. The very first edition of Cameroon Tribune was published on July 1, 1974 with the headline: “Ahidjo est de retour,” after official visits in Mogadishu, Paris, Rabat and Dakar. The General Manager at the time was Florent Etoga Eily and the Board Chairperson, François Sengat Kuoh. Toady July 1, 2024 therefore marks exactly 50 years of the existence of the newspaper, a publication by the Cameroon News and Publishing Corporation (SOPEACM). With an evolutionary history, Cameroon Tribune has moved from being a separate French and English publication, to a bilingual publication. That is, there was a French edition that was published daily (24 pages) and the English edition published twice a week (16 pages). In 1993, Cameroon Tribune became bilingual with each publication containing articles in the two official languages. Picture illustrations have also moved from black and white to colour and typing made easy, having shifted from the use of a type writer to digital computers. When the newspaper began colour illustrations, it was just the front page, page two and the last page that were in colour. Today, every page is printed with coloured illustrations and the print run is 25,000 per edition, as compared to 10,000 some decades back. This indicates the increase in the readership of the paper.  With the advent of the social media, Cameroon Tribune has created a digital platform where readers are updated on happenings nationwide in systematically.  
Over the years, articles have been written in active language, with short and easily understood sentences and using pictures that better tell the story at a first glance. The standard layout of the newspaper has five columns; politics, economy, society, sports and international, with magazine pages as well as special pages being published when there are distinct events. Such distinct events include national elections, Parliament holding in session, National Day commemoration (May 20), major sports competitions both national and international such as university games, Africa Cup of Nations, Olympic Games, and during international business fairs such as PROMOTE, just to name a few.  
Throughout its existence, Cameroon Tribune has made an effort to remain “the newspape...