Old profession

More than 20 years ago, when magazines, bi-monthly magazines… were as numerous as mushrooms after the rain, each newspaper wanted to be seen by its readers the most, most clearly. Therefore, hanging newspaper covers and posters - newspaper cover posters, was one of the important tasks for magazines, weeklies… when the newspaper was about to be published. This made hanging posters a separate game for magazines at that time.

The extinct "profession": hanging posters

Every time a newspaper is published, the editorial office will print thousands of large covers, the size of A0 paper, to hang and paste all over the newsstands. Thus, a force specializing in hanging and pasting posters on the newsstands was born, usually the distribution staff or members of the youth union or youth union of that newspaper volunteering to support. I am an example.

My job is to get up at 4-5am, following a pre-arranged route to go to newspaper stands in many areas of the city. Go there, ask about the situation of selling newspapers, sometimes help sell, and then the important part is to convince the stall owner to let me put up posters in the position I want. Usually, each newspaper will be hung at least 1 sheet, if you are good at networking, you can hang 3 or 4 posters at a time.

After a while, this became difficult. The newsstands were small, there was not enough space for everyone, and each newspaper wanted its posters to be seen clearly. So some newspapers decided to pay for the newsstands to display their posters as they wished. And the race to have their covers on the newsstands began.

A race without mercy, when the initial salary was from 40-50 thousand VND/month/stall, sometimes up to 250,000 VND/month (at the price of about 20 years ago). There were newspapers that paid a lot to buy out the stalls to exclusively display their publications. They also held competitions to select the stalls with the best posters every month and every quarter with generous rewards.

So, newspapers with little or no budget to hang posters had to do mass mobilization work. Some stall owners were arrogant and made a fuss, but there were also pity stall owners who took advantage of the situation and hung them secretly, afraid of being caught because they had already received exclusive money from another newspaper.

I've told this long story so that readers can understand that in addition to the competition in circulation numbers, the newspaper industry also had a race in the number of covers on newsstands.

“The race” was an interesting experience throughout my youth as a journalist; it was an opportunity for me to see my readers, the readers of the newspaper I was writing for in the closest way, to directly feel how readers received a newly published article or newspaper.

The profession that has not yet disappeared: selling newspapers

Decades ago, Saigon used to have newspaper streets with many newsstands in close quarters, before they gradually became less crowded like today. Mr. Le Van Hung's stall is located next to the University of Economics , near the intersection of Pham Ngoc Thach - Nguyen Dinh Chieu, District 3, Ho Chi Minh City, which used to be very busy with newsstands two decades ago. Mr. Hung has been selling newspapers since there were more than ten newsstands in this area, but now he is almost the only one left.

Mr. Hung became a newspaper seller by chance, since he followed his neighbors in his hometown of Quang Nam to Saigon to find work more than 20 years ago. Encouraged by his predecessors, he tried to make a living by selling newspapers, starting with a life of waking up and sleeping to follow the rhythm of going to the printing and distribution of newspapers.

Every morning around 2-3am, he got up to collect newspapers from printing houses, deliver them to his acquaintances, display them on the stall, and sell them continuously until evening. Mr. Hung opened a newspaper stall for nearly two years, and when he felt he had enough to live on, he brought his wife and children from the countryside to Saigon and opened another newspaper stall for his wife.

The couple started selling newspapers during the golden age of newspapers and magazines, and they were always busy. On good days, each stall sold a thousand or more copies, and rarely did they face the warning of unsaleable newspapers. Life was quite comfortable for a family from the Central region who immigrated to Vietnam.

Later, when the newspaper sales decreased, his family closed one stall, but he still stubbornly kept the other stall open, no matter how low the income was. Mr. Hung considered it not only a way to make a living but also a pleasure, having a place to update the latest and more reliable news every morning, even though his phone still used 4G to access the internet regularly.

Sometimes someone urges him to quit his job, he just laughs, saying I'm 54, 55 years old now, what am I doing now. I've been busy all day, had a stable income, and taken care of my family during the golden age of newspapers. What more could I want?" - Mr. Hung still opens the newspaper stand, sunny or rainy, waiting for the weekend when his long-time customers, who consider each other friends and share the same interest in reading newspapers, stop by to chat for fun.

I don’t know when the last of the “stubborn” newspaper sellers like Mr. Hung will leave. Perhaps, until there are no more people who find in newspapers something interesting, trustworthy, and cherished. Like CDs and LPs, after so many trends of listening to music online, they are still there, still accepted with a special place. Even though at times, it seems like they are just memories.

Source: https://baoquangnam.vn/nghe-muon-nam-cu-3157056.html