Every couple of months panic hits newsrooms around the world as Fidel Castro’s death is announced on Twitter. A scramble ensues as reporters try to confirm the rumour and editors make sure his obituary is up to date. Moments later, calm is restored as it turns out a fake account was responsible.
But there is one newspaper where the staff remains permanently unruffled. At Granma , the official newspaper of Cuba’s Communist Party (CCP), there is no Wi-Fi, leaving most of its reporters offline as soon as they step away from their desks, so Twitterstorms tend to pass them by. The paper’s deputy editor, Oscar Sanchez Serra, carries around a beaten-up old Nokia phone; he has no need for a smartphone to keep up with breaking news — after all, Cuba remains mostly cut off from the internet.
On the plus side, he said, given their close ties to the state, the editors of Granma are likely to know before anyone else when Castro does eventually die. “There is no doubt that we will be the first to find out,” said Sanchez.
To know more about the world’s slowest newsroom, read BuzzFeed’s article here .