An age-old profession

Over 20 years ago, when magazines and bi-monthly publications were sprouting up like mushrooms after the rain, each wanted to be seen as much and as clearly as possible by readers. Therefore, displaying magazine covers and posters was one of the most important tasks for magazines and weekly publications before their release. This made poster display a game exclusive to magazines at the time.

A "profession" that has disappeared: hanging posters.

Whenever a newspaper was published, the editorial office would print thousands of extra copies of the cover, printed in large sizes equivalent to A0 paper, and hang them up and paste them all over the newsstands. This gave rise to a team dedicated to hanging and pasting posters at newsstands, usually consisting of distribution staff or members of the newspaper's youth union or youth organization who volunteered to help. And I was one example.

My job was to wake up at 4-5 am, following a pre-planned route to newsstands in various locations throughout the city. I'd arrive, check on sales, sometimes help out, and then move on to the crucial part: convincing the stand owners to let me display my posters in the desired locations. Usually, each newspaper would have at least one poster displayed; with skillful networking, you could get three or four posters displayed at once.

After a while, this became less easy. Newsstands were small and couldn't accommodate everyone, and every newspaper wanted its poster to be the most prominent. Therefore, some newspapers decided to pay newsstands to display their posters as they wished. And so began the race for front-page coverage on newsstands.

It was a fierce competition, with initial fees ranging from 40,000 to 50,000 VND per month per stall, sometimes reaching 250,000 VND per month (at the prices of about 20 years ago). Some newspapers spent lavishly to buy out entire stalls exclusively displaying their publications. They even held monthly and quarterly competitions to select the best-designed posters for their stalls, offering generous prizes.

So, those stalls with little or no budget for posters had to resort to public relations work. Some stall owners were arrogant and difficult, but others were kind and secretly hung up posters, afraid of being caught because they had already accepted exclusive poster placement fees from other newspapers.

I've explained all this in detail so that readers understand that, besides the competition for circulation numbers, the newspaper industry once had a race to have the most covers displayed on newsstand fronts.

"The 'race' has been an exciting experience throughout my youth as a journalist; it's an opportunity for me to see my readers, the readers of the newspaper I'm writing for, in the closest way possible, to directly feel how readers receive a newly published article or newspaper."

The profession that hasn't disappeared yet: selling newspapers

Decades ago, Saigon used to have streets lined with numerous newspaper stalls clustered together, before they gradually dwindled to their current size. Mr. Le Van Hung's stall, located next to the University of Economics , near the intersection of Pham Ngoc Thach and Nguyen Dinh Chieu streets in District 3, Ho Chi Minh City, was once bustling with newspaper vendors two decades ago. Mr. Hung has been selling newspapers since the area had over a dozen stalls, and now he's practically the only one left.

Mr. Hung's job as a newspaper vendor was quite accidental. He followed his neighbors from his hometown in Quang Nam to Saigon to find work more than 20 years ago. Encouraged by those who had gone before him, he tried making a living selling newspapers, starting with a life of waking up and sleeping in sync with the printing and distribution schedules of the newspapers.

Around 2 or 3 in the morning, he would get up to collect newspapers from printing houses, deliver them to his regular customers, set up his stall, and sell continuously until late afternoon. Mr. Hung had been running his newspaper stall for nearly two years, and finding it sufficient to make a living, he brought his wife and children from his hometown to Saigon and opened another newspaper stall for his wife.

The couple sold newspapers during the golden age of print newspapers and magazines, keeping them busy non-stop. On good days, each of their stalls sold a thousand or more copies, rarely experiencing slow sales. Life was quite comfortable for a family from Central Vietnam who had immigrated there.

Later, when newspaper sales declined, his family closed one stall, but he stubbornly clung to the other, refusing to stop selling, no matter how low the income became. Mr. Hung considered it not just a means of livelihood but also a hobby, a place to catch up on the latest, more reliable news every morning, even though his phone was always connected to the internet via 4G.

Occasionally, people would urge him to quit, but he would just laugh and say, "I'm 54 or 55 years old now, what's the point? I've already worked hard from dawn till dusk, enjoyed a stable income, and provided for my family during the golden age of print newspapers. What more could I want?" - Mr. Hung still keeps his newspaper stall open, rain or shine, waiting for the weekend when long-time regulars, who consider each other friends and share a love of reading print newspapers, drop by to chat.

I don't know when the last of those stubborn newspaper vendors like Mr. Hung will finally leave. Perhaps it will be when there are no more people who find something interesting, reliable, and cherished in print newspapers. Like CDs and LPs, after so many trends of online music streaming have taken over, they are still there, still appreciated with a special place. Even though at times, they seemed to be just a memory.

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