Once a roaring press, Ethiopia’s print media is now reduced to whispers

Solomon Kassa remembers the weight of a morning paper.

For 26 years, he stood on street corners, at bus stops, and outside cafés, his arms stacked with the latest headlines. “The print media before was very good. The system worked fine,” he says, his voice edged with disbelief. “Twenty years ago, there were three or four papers published every day. Yes, there were customers. But now? The situation is problematic—it is on the verge of complete disappearance.”

For children who grew up in Addis Ababa in the 1990s, the city’s relationship with print media lives somewhere between memory and myth. Those who came of age in the 1970s and 1980s recall a fiery, restless capital, hungry for the rustle of newsprint every morning. To many born after the Ethiopian Millennium—now in their twenties—it sounds almost like fiction: the age of readers, the age of print.

Once, around Addis Ababa Stadium, Piassa, and Arat Kilo, brick-and-stone facades framed streets buzzing with newspaper vendors. Elderly men—once the revolutionary youth of the 1970s and 1980s—sat in Piassa cafés, flipping through folded pages. In Arat Kilo, teenagers without the price of a paper rented one for a few cents, hunched over for minutes at a time before returning it to the vendor. At Legahar or at crowded bus stops, the transaction was quick, but the engagement deep. Addis was once a city that read.

Now, the generation that bridges past and present watches that world fade. Urban redevelopment has replaced weathered stone with smooth plaster, and with it, many of the city’s reading rituals. The supposed next generation is glued to glowing screens, their attention shaped by the one-sided feed of social media algorithms. The habit of deep reading is being quietly replaced by the habit of scrolling.

Times change, of course. But a generation whose patience is measured in the span of a three-minute video is unlikely to linger over a column of nuanced political analysis. Some still ask, “How do we go back?” Others, knowing that era cannot fully return, feel like members of a vanishing tribe.

The “wereshachoch” — the paper hawkers — have all but vanished. Once as common in city squares as shoe shiners and lottery sellers, they have disappeared from public life, leaving behind a question that haunts those who remember: What went wrong?

Ethiopia’s newspaper industry did not collapse overnight. It has been an uneven descent shaped by decades of political shifts, economic hardship, and the march of technology. Once the proud voice of a reading nation, the press has been reduced, in many ways, to a whisper.

Modern printing first appeared in Ethiopia in the late 19th century. The BerhanenaSelam Printing Press, established in the 1920s, became a milestone for national dialogue, producing Addis Zemen in 1941 and the English-language Ethiopian Herald in 1943. By the mid-20th century, cafés, bars, and public squares echoed with the rustle of newspapers — a ticket into the national conversation.

The 1970s and 1980s brought both a boom in print and deepening risks. Research indicates that Ethiopia had 119 publications — 82 newspapers and 37 magazines — during the era. Street vendors were as much a part of the city’s soundtrack as car horns and church bells. But this growth unfolded under political turbulence. Governments rose and fell, revolutions erupted, and censorship — both overt and covert — remained a constant. Press freedom was a fragile privilege, easily withdrawn when political winds shifted.

In 2018, the arrival of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed seemed to break open the gates. Jailed journalists walked free. Exiled newspapers returned. Voices long silenced echoed again in public spaces. For a brief moment, the press exhaled after years of holding its breath.

That moment ended abruptly in 2020 with the outbreak of the Tigray war. Media blackouts, the arrest of more than 200 journalists, and the killing of at least two — as reported by The Guardian — marked a chilling turn. By 2025, Ethiopia’s ranking on the World Press Freedom Index had plunged, driven by harassment, intimidation, and legal crackdowns.

For those like Solomon, the symptoms have been visible for years. The disease has only fully flared now.

Globally, print circulation has been in steady decline for two decades, replaced by the speed and convenience of digital platforms. In Ethiopia, the drop has been steeper — accelerated by economic strain and political headwinds. During the country’s print heyday, newspapers thrived on loyal readers, engaged distributors, and a steady balance between demand and supply.

Today, offices that once bustled with hundreds of visitors are quiet. Print runs that once reached 500 or 600 copies have dwindled to 100 or fewer. “Because of decreased readership, no one is buying newspapers even if they want to,” says TekaDesalegn, a vendor who used to distribute up to a thousand copies across Addis Ababa.

Distributors and media observers cite an interlocking web of causes: economic hardship, the migration to digital, distribution breakdowns, and persistent political constraints. A 2022 World Bank report noted that Ethiopia’s prolonged economic malaise had eroded disposable incomes, making even the modest cost of a newspaper feel like a luxury.

Solomon, the longtime distributor, puts it bluntly: “Why would anyone buy a paper when they can just click a link on their phone? The money spent is now seen as waste, not investment.”

Social media platforms — Facebook, Twitter, TikTok — have reshaped how information is consumed. “When TikTok came, many of us thought it would disappear quickly,” recalls one industry insider. “We denounced it, discouraged it. Nevertheless, it expanded and keeps increasing.”

Distribution networks, once the backbone of the industry, are collapsing. This crumbling infrastructure mirrors the broader erosion of editorial independence and financial viability, which has led to the closure or suspension of several outlets. The disappearance of print represents not just a commercial failure but a civic one: newspapers were a shared cultural resource, a space for public dialogue and accountability. Without them, the public’s capacity to engage meaningfully in civic life narrows.

The list of casualties grows. Four months ago, Addis Admass, a weekly Amharic-language paper published since 1992 E.C., simply stopped printing, vendors told The Reporter. With each closure comes fewer investigative reports, less scrutiny of power, and a shrinking diversity of viewpoints.

Meanwhile, the gradual death of the publications doesn’t seem to deter the printing press companies as they push their price gap following on each and every market fuluctuation, be it the impact of currency devaluation of the increase in the price of paper.

A veteran chief graphics designer stated that while printing houses like Berhane ena Selam absorb some of the impacts resulted by market value chain disruptions, notify publications of price increase months ahead and offer

Elsewhere in the world, newspapers have survived the digital disruption by building paywalls, cultivating subscriptions, and investing in multimedia storytelling. In Ethiopia, such strategies are hampered by low internet penetration, high data costs, and limited digital infrastructure.

But digital migration brings its own hazards: misinformation, echo chambers, and weaker editorial standards. The decline of print also erodes cultural memory. Newspapers once served as archives of collective experience; their disappearance removes a vital record of national life.

What’s vanishing is not just a business model but a shared habit — the slow, deliberate act of reading together. It was a rhythm of civic life.

The younger generation, raised in the architecture of algorithms, may never know the feel of newsprint or the smell of fresh ink on a weekend morning. Yet for the few remaining hawkers and scattered loyalists who still buy a paper, each copy is more than information. It is a relic of another Ethiopia — one that believed a nation could, quite literally, be on the same page.