by Hla Min
Updated : June 2025
Early Days
- In the early days, there were many newspapers, news agencies and reporters.
Journalists
- U Ba Cho (Deedok ဒီးဒုတ်)
- U Law Yone (Nation)
- U Sein Win (Guardian)
- U Ba Than (UPI)
- U Nyo Mya (Oway အိုးဝေ)
- U Ohn Khin (Bama Khit ဗမာ့ခေတ် later Mogyo မိုးကြိုး)
- U Thaung (Kyemon ကြေးမုံ)
- U Thein — ဇဝန
- U Ohn Pe — တက်တိုး
- U Hla & Daw Ah Mar (Ludu လူထု)
- They were some of the journalists and/or publishers.
After 1962
- Only six newspapers : four in Burmese and two in English.
- News Agency Burma (NAB), collected news from the news agencies, selectively translated them and distributed them to the newspapers.
- There was a silver lining. Working People’s Daily (WPD) and Guardian had interesting Columns & Supplements.
WPD
- U Khin Maung Latt was the first Chief Editor. His successors include U Than Saw & U Ko Lay.
- U Ko Ko wrote the “Motley” column.
- Had Sunday Supplement & Special Issues for Thadinkyut, Sar So Daw Nay, etc. Featured Translation of Modern Burmese Writings (e.g. Short Stories, Poems). I received fifty Kyats for translating “Nge Thay Loe ငယ်သေးလို့” short story by U Thu Kha). U Thu Kha was given fifty kyats.
- Daw Khin Swe Hla (Editor) wanted to encourage fledgling writers. She earlier founded the “Dawlay’s Circle” at Guardian & held Essay Contests for young writers. The winners included Hla Yee Yee, Winsome & Katherine Ba Thike, Errol Than Tun (Bobby Myo Tun), LRC Trutwein and Tin Maung Aung. Subsequent “Dawlays” include Mr. Tim Marshall and Mr. P. Aung Khin (Paul).
Guardian
- U Soe Myint was Chief Editor. He is the eldest son of U Thein Maung (Htin Lin) and the son-in-law of U Than Saw (his former boss at WPD).
- My poem “Men on the Moon” honoring the Apollo 11 astronauts was published in the Guardian in July 1969. Ashin Ananda gave a copy of my poem to Mr. Hall (USIS), who forwarded to NASA. Mr Hall also put me on the USIS mailing list. I received “Lin Yaung Chi လင်းရောင်ခြည်” and translations of selected books.
Writer
- I became a free lance writer.
- I received fifteen Kyats for writing poems, articles, translation of poems in WPD, Guardian and Forward Magazine.
- The later magazines (Pan — ပန် Veda — ဝေဇဒ) offered 25 to 50 Kyats.
