How do you put out a paper when riots have paralyzed the city?

By building calf muscles as strong as Diego Forlan’s!

We walked. And walked. On day 2 of the riots, Fernando Mbanze, the editor of Savana sister’s publication, Media Fax started walking at 6:30 am and reached the newsroom 22 kms later, at 10:30. Several times the Savana car tried to reach him but either protesters or police, barricades of burning tyres or random shooting, prevented the car from going through. So Mbanze walked on.

Fearing their cars might be stoned, damaged or burnt, car owners did not venture out. There were just a few taxis available in what is known as the concrete city, where the middle class and the wealthy live. The concrete city was effectively cordoned off from the protests in the straw city, where the poor live. Savana closing day is Wednesday evening. But during the riots, the graphic designer was trapped in his neighbourhood, Mahotas, in the outskirts of Maputo. Only on Friday the car could fetch him and bring him into the concrete city.

Reporters started streaming into the newsroom on Friday morning. Most walked for one hour or more from their homes.

It was heroic. It was also old fashioned. Because in the age of cellphones and twitter, there are more efficient ways of reporting and putting a paper out.

The riots marked the first time that twitter had an impact in Mozambique. Local and foreign journalists twittered in Portuguese and English, attracting the attention of international media and political observers. The weekly Verdade led with readers posting updates onto its facebook page and an Ushahidi map showing the violence.The Committee to Protect Journalists picked up the trend. Read the whole article.

Interestingly, the strike was organized via sms and emails that went viral. The strikers may have been poor and unemployed but they were not digital illiterates. They knew how to send sms without leaving traces to the more than seven million cellphone users in this country (pop 21m).

I suggested to Savana that next time our reporters should start twittering during breaking news, and the paper should have a facebook page uploaded constantly during crisis, instead of waiting to upload the website only after the printed edition is out on the street.

One drawback is that few reporters have computer and internet at home, and even fewer have smart phones. And who wants to carry an expensive phone in the mean streets of Maputo, where cell grabbing is so prevalent?

Belatedly, four days after the riots died down and the city went back to normal - bakeries had bread, barricades were cleared, shops reopened – the government ordered cellphone companies Vodacom and Mcell to shut down sms service. Savana had the scoop: it published a leaked letter from government telecoms regulator ordering the blackout.

The South African Press Agency picked that up. South African media and press freedom monitors complained. The following day, Vodacom, a South African company, issued a press release admitting it had complied with the order to shut down our phones for three days.

So sms and twitter are great ways to cover breaking news…as long as the powers that be don’t interfere with our phones.