Wow! 90-Year-Old Journalist Travels Weekly To Deliver Papers to Community
A 90-year-old journalist named Frans Hugo makes a weekly 1,200-kilometer trip to Prieska, a small village in South Africa, to deliver newspapers to locals.
“I continue to do this on Thursdays without fail. When I am physically unable to continue, I will probably stop” Mr. Hugo told AFP.
The Messenger, formerly known as the Victoria West Messenger, Die Noordwester, and Die Oewernuus are still edited and delivered by nonagenarian Mr. Hugo every Thursday without fail.
Mr. Hugo stated that he typically left Calvinia at 1:30 a.m. in his orange Fiat Multipla and arrived back in the early evening after distributing around 1,300 copies, a number that demonstrated that some people still prefer reading news in print.
The thought of those who prefer “to read the news on their cellphones” didn’t appear to impress him.
The journalist spent over 30 years working in Cape Town and Namibia before retiring to the Karoo area because he could no longer “bear the pressure.”
He added that when he least anticipated it, he received an offer for the newspaper business.
“The man who owned the printers and the newspaper here in Calvinia came to ask me whether I was interested in the business just as I was able to take a breath and relax,” the author writes.
The firm is currently handled by him, his wife, and three other assistants.
One of the journals might have been published as early as the 18th century. In 1875, The Messenger was founded. Die Noordwester and Die Oewernuus, the other two newspapers, were established in the early 1900s.
The daily newspapers cost eight rands and are printed in one of the 11 official languages of South Africa, Afrikaan.
