Lanka Tribune
Lanka Tribune is a free community newspaper published in London for Sri Lankans living in the United Kingdom. Launched in 2007 in a compact format and appearing fortnightly, it combines news from Sri Lanka with news of the British Sri Lankan community, serving readers whose lives connect the two countries. The paper is edited by Rasantha Cooray and published in Harrow, in north-west London, an area that is home to a significant Sri Lankan population. Registered as a newspaper in the United Kingdom, Lanka Tribune is one of a number of diaspora titles that sustain language, culture and political awareness among migrant communities in Britain, while also keeping readers informed about events in their country of origin.
Founding and format
Lanka Tribune was launched in the United Kingdom in 2007. From the beginning it was produced in compact size, the smaller page format adopted by many British newspapers in the early twenty-first century because it is easier to handle on public transport and cheaper to distribute as a free title. Publication is fortnightly, a rhythm that suits a free community paper funded principally by advertising rather than by a cover price. Being free removes a barrier for readers and allows the paper to be picked up in shops, restaurants, temples, community centres and other gathering places used by Sri Lankans in Britain.
The decision to publish from Harrow, in Middlesex, places the paper within reach of one of London's established South Asian communities. Harrow and the neighbouring boroughs of Brent and Wembley contain large Tamil and Sinhalese populations, as well as businesses, places of worship and cultural organisations serving them. A community newspaper based in such an area can gather advertising from local traders, report on local events at first hand and distribute copies where its readers already shop and meet.
Editor and contributors
The newspaper is edited by Rasantha Cooray, whose name heads the list of its journalists and columnists. Around the editor, Lanka Tribune has drawn on a wide roster of contributors. Names associated with the paper include Andrew McLean, Ivan Corea, Sydney Reynolds, Munza Mushtaq, Keerthi Senanayake, Suren Ladd, Anand Vamadeva, Risidra Mendis, Sanjeevani Seneviratne, Shyana Mushin, Santhush Fernando, Durga Ramachandran, Amali De Alwis, Sidanthi Siriwardena, Anarkalee Robert and Vickum Mahanama. Such a contributor base is characteristic of diaspora publishing, in which community journalists, broadcasters, writers and activists write alongside professional reporters, often contributing commentary, cultural coverage and specialist knowledge of Sri Lanka as well as reporting from Britain.
Ivan Corea, one of the named contributors, is part of a family with a long history in Sri Lankan broadcasting and public life, illustrating the way Lanka Tribune connects its British readership with established voices from Sri Lanka's media and civic world. The mixture of bylines also reflects the diversity of the community itself, which includes Sinhalese, Tamil and Muslim Sri Lankans, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims, and several generations of settlement in Britain.
Distribution beyond London
Although published in London, Lanka Tribune was never intended for the capital alone. Its recorded distribution extends to Birmingham, Manchester and Leicester, three other English cities with substantial Sri Lankan communities, and to Glasgow in Scotland and Dublin in Ireland. More unusually for a British community title, copies have also been distributed in Colombo, the commercial capital of Sri Lanka, and in Frankfurt, Paris and Rome, European cities with their own Sri Lankan diaspora populations. That pattern shows how diaspora media circulate along the same routes as the communities themselves: families divided between Britain, continental Europe and Sri Lanka use the same newspaper to follow community news and developments at home.
Distribution of this kind depends on community networks rather than on the newsagent wholesaling system used by national newspapers. Copies travel through businesses and organisations, are collected by readers, and are passed between households. For a free fortnightly, breadth of distribution is also an advertising proposition: businesses wishing to reach Sri Lankan customers in several cities can do so through a single title.
Content: two homelands
Lanka Tribune provides two strands of news. The first is community news for British Sri Lankans: events, achievements, religious and cultural festivals, business openings, community campaigns and the activities of Sri Lankan organisations in the United Kingdom. The second is news from the island of Sri Lanka itself, covering politics, the economy, sport, culture and the issues that dominate public debate there. That dual focus is the defining feature of diaspora journalism. Readers need practical information about life in Britain, but many also follow Sri Lankan affairs closely, maintain family and property ties there, and take part in debates about the country's future.
The period of the paper's launch gave that second strand particular weight. Lanka Tribune began publication in 2007, during the final phase of Sri Lanka's long civil war, which ended in 2009. British Sri Lankans, especially Tamils in London, were deeply engaged with events on the island, and community media played a part in reporting protests, humanitarian appeals and political argument in Britain. In the years since, the balance of coverage in diaspora titles has broadened to include reconciliation, post-war development, tourism, cricket and cultural exchange, alongside continuing political reporting.
The British Sri Lankan community
The community the paper serves has been formed by several waves of migration. Sri Lankans came to Britain for education and professional work in the decades after the Second World War, and larger numbers arrived from the 1980s onwards as a result of civil conflict in Sri Lanka, seeking safety and the chance to rebuild their lives. London received the largest share, with established communities in boroughs including Harrow, Brent, Newham, Croydon, Merton and Sutton, and smaller communities formed in cities across England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland.
Community newspapers serve such a population in ways that mainstream British media cannot. They report the events that matter locally to the community, publicise its businesses and professionals, celebrate the examination successes and sporting achievements of its young people, and record the passing of its elders. They also provide a platform in English, the shared language of Sri Lanka's ethnic groups and the first language of many British-born Sri Lankans, through which different parts of the community can address one another.
Language and identity
Lanka Tribune is an English-language newspaper, and that choice is significant. Sri Lanka's communities speak Sinhala, Tamil and English, and a paper published in English can be read across those divisions, as well as by the British-born generation whose strongest language is usually English. At the same time, its subject matter is unmistakably Sri Lankan: the name Lanka Tribune itself proclaims the connection, using the island's historic name and a title, Tribune, drawn from the classical tradition of representing the people.
For second and third generation readers, a title of this kind offers a link with a heritage they may know mainly through family, food, religion and visits to Sri Lanka. Community reporting in English helps maintain that link without requiring fluency in Sinhala or Tamil, while coverage of Sri Lanka introduces younger readers to the politics and culture of the country their parents and grandparents left.
Place among diaspora titles
Britain has a long tradition of community and diaspora newspapers, from titles serving Caribbean, South Asian, Chinese, Turkish, Polish and many other communities. Lanka Tribune belongs to that tradition and is listed among both Sri Lankan newspapers and newspapers of the United Kingdom, a dual listing that captures its position between two media worlds. Within Sri Lanka's own media landscape, which includes long-established English-language dailies in Colombo, Lanka Tribune represents the external, diaspora branch of Sri Lankan journalism, produced for readers whose frame of reference includes both countries.
The paper's survival as a free print title is also notable. Many community newspapers have moved entirely online or closed as advertising has shifted to digital platforms and social media. A fortnightly printed paper, distributed through community outlets in several countries, continues to offer something different: a shared, tangible publication that readers encounter in the course of community life, and that advertisers can use to reach a defined audience gathered in identifiable places.
Significance
Lanka Tribune's significance lies in the role it plays for a dispersed community. Launched in London in 2007, edited by Rasantha Cooray, published from Harrow and distributed from Birmingham and Manchester to Colombo, Frankfurt, Paris and Rome, it has provided British Sri Lankans with a single source combining news of their community in Britain with news from Sri Lanka. In doing so it supports the cultural, commercial and political life of the diaspora, and stands as an example of how migrant communities in Britain have built their own media to serve needs that no other publication meets.
