Old profession

More than 20 years ago, when magazines and bi-monthly magazines were growing like mushrooms after the rain, each magazine wanted to be seen by its readers the most and most clearly. Therefore, hanging newspaper covers and posters - newspaper cover posters, was one of the important tasks for magazines and weekly magazines when they were preparing to publish. 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 newsstands was born, usually the distribution staff or members of the youth union of that newspaper volunteering to support. I am an example.

My job is to wake up at 4-5am, following a pre-arranged route to go to newspaper stands in many areas of the city. I 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 hang posters in the location 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. 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 newsstands to display posters according to their wishes. And the race to have their covers on the stands 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). Some newspapers paid a lot of money 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 some pity stall owners who took advantage of the situation and hung posters 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 story of competing in circulation numbers, the newspaper industry once 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 numerous as they are 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 bustling 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 would get up to collect newspapers from printing houses, deliver them to his acquaintances, display them on his stall, and sell them continuously until evening. Mr. Hung opened his newspaper stall for nearly two years, and seeing that it was enough to make a living, he brought his wife and children from the countryside to Saigon and opened another newspaper stall for his wife.

The couple sold 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 a warning of unsaleable newspapers. Life was quite comfortable for a Central immigrant family like his.

Later, when the newspaper sales decreased, his family closed one stall, but he still kept the other stall, determined not to stop selling, 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 most reliable news every morning, even though his phone still used 4G to connect to the internet regularly.

Sometimes, someone would urge him to quit his job, but he would just laugh and say, “I’m 54 or 55 years old now, what are you 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 opened his newspaper stand, rain or shine, waiting for the weekend when his long-time customers, who consider each other friends and share the same interest in reading newspapers, would stop by and 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 paper newspapers interesting, trustworthy, and cherished. Like CDs and LPs, after 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