What I've heard is that...

Some 24 newspapers are published in this city, way more than are needed or read. The number has to do with government subsidies plus a deliberate laxity until recently about collecting on bills owed the government-owned printing press. You only had to pay up if you published a story the government didn’t like.
None of the papers, whether in French or Arabic, has a huge circulation. This is partly because they are highly political and not reader-friendly, the reason for our program being here. Partly it’s due to the fact that papers are either French or Arabic; there’s a resistance to printing a paper that uses both language – like the population. A co-worker told us a newspaper has a soul and to have it speak in two languages is bothering. But low newspaper readership is also related to high illiteracy – about 30 percent although it’s worse for women than for men.
So, how then do people find out what’s going on? There appears to be a highly efficient grapevine. “We have heard that…” Nadir will begin a story about some on-going news event. “What we know is that…”