by: Hans King
My journey with Searchlight started in 1995 after a chance encounter with Bassy Alexander. I was unemployed at the time having resigned my job as a teacher at the St. Vincent Grammar School after three years. I met Bassy in the public road at Murray’s Village and asked him if there were any vacancies at the newly formed newspaper, which I heard he was a director of. Bassy promised to speak with the editor at the time Mrs. Norma Keizer and get back to me. To cut a long story short, I was interviewed sometime after that and began working as a senior news reporter with responsibilities also for distribution and marketing.
I spent about three years in those roles before being appointed a Sub-editor, having been trained by my Barbadian colleague Jude Knight, who had come to the Searchlight via the Barbados Nation. In those days, the newspaper was printed in Barbados and one my duties was to take the zip drive on a weekly basis to Barbados to complete the layout and the printing of the newspaper.
I spent a total of five years at Searchlight before moving on to SVG Broadcasting Corporation where I was offered the role as Assistant News Director.
Searchlight, however, helped to lay the foundation for that role and future role as Press Secretary to the Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves from 2006-2019.
While I enjoyed my five years at the institution, it was not without its conflicts, including editorial disagreements and a level of timidity which saw me at least on two occasions not being able to break the news on certain events while the competition at the time, the News newspaper, were bold enough to publish the same stories. Part of that I believe was the effort by Searchlight to set a certain standard. To always be accurate and not having to apologize for misinformation.
The truth is I took pride in the product that we produced, and it is my opinion up to this day that the Searchlight newspaper, though not the most popular, was certainly the best.
It saddens me that this publication dated 25th September 2026, will be the last printed publication of Searchlight. With the influx of online blogs and news sites newspaper sales have plummeted over the years. There is still in my mind something special about the printed word and holding a newspaper in your hand. Perhaps the time will come again when this may be seen as something of great value.
In the meantime, I think Searchlight has served us well and all who have been involved in its creation and production have much to be proud of.
So long, farewell Searchlight!
