Well, it was not exactly the kind of stuff they could have paid Michael Buffer, the top notch announcer of big boxing matches, to get his inimitable trademark pre-fight introduction going.

But, judging from the way they sounded the gong last week, they dearly wanted to get into some kind of mother of all fights with the powers that be in this country.

I was among those in the media world taken by surprise at the surprise move by the Stabroek News to get into a fight with the government over the number of state advertisements the newspaper gets, or does not get.

Well, duh, was my reaction when I read the strange complaint by the newspaper that it was being discriminated against by the government because it was not getting any more state ads.

A privately-owned newspaper going public and asking the government for more ads?

I was one of the key persons with the Stabroek News from when it started in late 1985 and stayed with it until after the historic October 5, 1992 general elections when I resigned to join the Guyana Chronicle.

It was then and still is a privately-owned newspaper with a lot of support from major newspapers in the Caribbean.

In the beginning, it never got ads from the government of the day and had to depend largely on the private sector to get ads and to become a commercial venture.

It operated in a hostile environment then and, being a privately-owned media, had to find ways of making do without any doling out of ads from the state and the government of the day.

And in the years since, I thought it was doing rather well, and had long grown accustomed to making do without having to depend on largesse from the state.

There’s always a battle among newspapers and other media for slices of the advertising cake and businesses, governments and others who want, and have to advertise, look around and place their ads where they feel it best serves their interest.

It would be foolish, for example, for the Guyana Chronicle to go screaming on its front pages, that some big private companies, for whatever reason, choose not to advertise with the newspaper.

It’s their right to advertise where they feel they would get the best mileage for their advertising dollar and not place their ads someplace purely out of the goodness of their hearts. That would not be good advertising sense.

In countries where there are several newspapers and other media, governments are not obliged to place their ads with all media and go about this mainly to ensure the ads are in the public domain and that they can get the response they are seeking.

They, and others, look for niche markets and the best avenues to get value for their money.

I have seen times when the Stabroek News and the Kaieteur News have had far more state and government ads than we have had and we did not go complaining to the government that it was taking away its ads from us because we were not doing what it had expected of us.

And I have seen many times when we have had far more ads from private businesses than the other two newspapers combined without any accompanying complaints.

And the Kaieteur News, has fittingly, made the point that it had for 10 years had to make do without any ads from the government.

And even though it cannot be considered a Guyana Government-friendly media house, the Kaieteur News, we are told, today gets more than its fair share of government ads.

So, what’s all this fussing and fighting about? That’s the way it is.

What would happen if the government was to shut out ads from the Kaieteur News and the Guyana Chronicle and channel it to only the other newspaper?

Would there be the same screaming and kicking and fussing and fighting?

If a newspaper or any other media finds itself in dire straits without support from a certain quarter, it has to get creative and urge its allies to rally around its cause.

Getting into a Michael Buffer imitation is a little stale and may not yield the desired results.

It may make for good showmanship and rally a cry or two, but does it really work?

A quiet appeal for help, if indeed the newspaper found itself in dire straits, may have been a better option.

In the meantime, I’ll stay on the sidelines and watch the show. And hope we get a bigger slice of the cake.