Earl Best

Did anyone else react with a long, wet steups to the CNC3 sports news on Thursday night? Maybe steups are music to Ryan Bachoo’s ears. I cannot imagine any other reason why a young man who clearly works so hard at his craft would choose to bring us news off …

Watson Duke, would-be prime minister of Tobago, held a news conference recently. Not for the first time with this high-profile personality from the sister isle, things did not exactly go swimmingly. I say ‘sister isle’ but for how much longer, I wonder. Trinidad and Tobago remains one country but that’s …

Which bowler has captured 355 wickets in 111 Tests and 400 more in his 322 ODIs in 15 years spent in the international arena on both sides of the watershed year 2000? Here’s a helpful clue: he is a vassly experienced former Sri Lankan fass bowler, who has just opted …

“A La Romain man who was shot and killed on January 10,” CNC3’s Jesse Ramdeo reported just over a month ago, “has died.” You laugh. In spite of yourself.  Raucous mid-morning laughter had also filled the Guardian newsroom way back in the 1990s as the word got around. Crime ace …

Two questions demanded an answer last week during the second Donald Trump impeachment proceedings. Fascinated by the phenomenon of fascism’s fight for a firm foothold in what once was democracy’s fortress, few had missed round one last year. This time around, many watched very little, including the final vote. After …

Thackoor Boodram. Remember the name? I do. Not because he is—was—important to me but because journalism is—was—important to me.  New Year’s Day, 1 January, 1998. Guess what gift one of the daily papers in Trinidad and Tobago offered on its front page? Why, a man’s head.  It had been found …

Remember the OUR OBSCENE TRAGEDY editorial to which the Guardian devoted its front page on Sunday 7 February?  The following day, the Express devoted both its front and back pages to continuing outrage and public protests over the most recent killing of a 23-year-old The UWI graduate. And contrary to …

“Allyuh publishin anything now?” asked a sarcastic commenter on a recent Wired868 story.  Wired868’s editor is not the person who spent two years performing autopsies on the two media dinosaurs in Port-of-Spain. But he is nonetheless acutely aware of the adage that enjoins entities to adapt or die. To the …

“Nah, sir!” Two words, no more. But I know I heard controlled anger. I know I heard complete disbelief.  “You mean you read (she used the present tense) that Sunday Guardian editorial,” she said, her voice almost breaking with the effort not to lose control, “and only see grammatical errors?” …

If you plan to be a journalist in voice or vision media at the BBC, be prepared to spend a full three months merely learning names. Important people, places, common foreign words and phrases and, of course, commonly mispronounced words like ‘epitome’ and ‘anemone’. One wonders if any such arrangements …

“Shakespeare, yuh go dead before mih.” If, as children, we happened to say the same words at the same time, my sisters and I used to blurt out those six words. And we used to hear Billy Graham on the radio on Sunday mornings. All four of those sisters eventually …

It wasn’t, we knew then, the best of times; it wasn’t, we now know, the worst of times.  When, in July 1990, Yasin Abu Bakr opened a door and, in David Rudder’s well-weighted words, showed us our other side, like Adam and Eve, we went frantically in search of a …