Written by David Brewer

The World Association of Newspapers has stepped in to help a newspaper for Bhutanese refugees continue to publish. The Bhutan Reporter, a monthly distributed throughout the refugee camps in Nepal, was forced to stop printing because it was unable to afford the monthly costs of 2,000 Nepalese rupees (€22).

WAN says it will sponsor the newspaper for three months and try to help it find a long-term sponsor so that it can publish weekly instead of monthly. A spokesperson said that TBR seems to play a vital role for the Bhutanese refugees in Nepal.

"Supporting such an initiative was an obvious thing to do, and we hope that we can find a long term solution for the paper as well."

TP Mishra, the editor of TBR, expressed his gratitude to WAN for the offer in a message posted in the comments attached to this article.

He described the response of WAN in extending support to the monthly newspaper was "praiseworthy".

""TBR team is committed towards its publication even weekly despite several challenges. I, Editor of TBR, would like to extend sincere thanks to WAN for supportive response."

TBR began publishing in 2004 and has a print run of 1,000. It is produced and financed by a handful of refugee journalists stationed in all seven refugee camps and working unpaid.

The newspaper is published by the Bhutan Media Society, the publishing house of the Association of Press Freedom Activists (APFA) - Bhutan.

Every month TBR is uploaded to the APFA site in .pdf form. Click here for the latest edition.

Last month those producing the paper couldn’t raise the money to print hard copies and the print run stopped.

The plight of TBR was highlighted on this site after the editor, TP Mishra, sent Media Helping Media an email about their financial situation.

This site published the story and contacted WAN. The global organisation for the newspaper industry, which defends and promotes press freedom world-wide, responded and offered short-term help.

Staff at the TBR had said they were determined to raise the money needed to keep the monthly going and vowed to go weekly if they could raise 14,000 Nepalese rupees (€150) a month.

Now, following the WAN support, the staff at TBR can start planning to ramp up for a weekly publication schedule.