CARLOS JAMES, ESQ.
By Carlos James, Esq.
Like a perfect final symphony, a decades-old ritual played out in the pre-dawn stillness of the capital city, Kingstown, for the very last time. The familiar rattle of delivery vans signalled the end of an era, scattering the final run of the fresh, tightly bound bundles of newsprint across the cobblestone streets. By sunrise, loyal readers would unfurl pages containing the final printed pieces of the Searchlight newspaper.
It was a familiar syncopation, the final movement of a Friday morning rhythm where the chatter of a waking city would traditionally gather around a shared lead story, bringing a poignant, abrupt end to a 31-year-old institution.
It is a modern tragedy now common to local newsrooms worldwide, driven by the brutal economics of twenty-first-century media. Faced with the crushing weight of escalating printing costs, or perhaps dwindling advertising revenues, and an audience that has decisively migrated online, the Board of Directors of Interactive Media Limited announced a pivot to an entirely digital future for Searchlight. It is a logical, perhaps unavoidable strategy for survival. Yet, for those of us who spent our formative years inside its bustling newsroom, the transition feels less like a restructuring and more like a death in the family.
My own journey with the paper began as a wide-eyed sixteen-year-old, utterly captivated by the machinery of information and the chaotic mechanics of newsroom production. Searchlight was, in every sense, my first university. I was fortunate to be thrown into a masterclass in writing and the English language conducted by true titans of traditional media.
At the helm was our first managing editor, the late Norma Keizer. A legend of uncompromising stature, she commanded the newsroom with a fierce, quiet devotion to standards. Every week under her gaze was an education in precision. There was the sharp pen of Corletha Ollivierre, deftly stitching the elements of a breaking story together. Sitting nearby was Leroy Mulraine, our resident proofreader, a master of literature and Latin whose keen eyes caught every stray comma and lazy syntax. Beside them was William “Kojah” Anthony, whose blunt prose forced readers to confront the unvarnished complexities of our Caribbean reality, and Jude Knight, an experienced hand, whose creative spark knew exactly how to bring the imagination of the storytellers to life. In later years, Dexter Rose and Clare Keizer arrived, injecting a stylistic sophistication into the pages. The environment fostered was electric, a crucible of intense, healthy competition among writers and sub-editors. It was within this beautiful, chaotic friction that my own professional instincts were quietly forged.
More profoundly, Searchlight taught me how to read the landscape of our Caribbean region and its maturing political economy. To capture a Caribbean story is to document a unique socio-political architecture, one forged by the confluence of transformative historical undercurrents and a fluid, deeply expressive social fabric.
It was under the maternal guidance of Norma Keizer that I left the newsroom to pursue formal journalism studies, eventually learning from regional intellectual titans like Sir Roy Augier, Professor Rex Nettleford, and Professor Aggrey Browne. Yet, sitting in those lecture halls, and debating the academic boundaries of the structural pyramids of objectivity and subjectivity, I experienced a quiet shock of recognition.
I was not discovering new conceptual frontiers; I was merely assigning academic nomenclature to the human truths I had already acquired on the newsroom floor.
When I finally left the newsroom, I did so carrying an insatiable curiosity. That hunger ultimately carried me through three different universities, anchored my career as a barrister, and eventually led me into public service. Yet throughout my professional life, my mind has always anchored itself back to the foundation laid by the Searchlight family. They taught me that journalism is not an abstract academic exercise, but a gruelling, beautiful, and deeply human craft.
As the printing presses dim for the last time, those of us who lived for their low, steady roar will look at the final edition with a mixture of profound pride and quiet mourning. Journalism will undoubtedly survive on screens, adapting to the cold efficiency of pixels and algorithms. But the soul of the physical newsroom, defined by the physical weight of history in your hands, has quietly slipped away into the night.
* Carlos James is a former Searchlight staff member, a trained journalist, Barrister-at-Law, Solicitor and a member of the Parliament of the Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
