IMAGE: KANTIPUR
IN 1993 a broadsheet rolled off the presses in Kathmandu promising to publish without fear or favour. The Kathmandu Post arrived three years after democracy was restored, when Nepal’s newsstands were finally opening up after decades of state monopoly. A private English-language daily edited by journalists who had cut their teeth during the pro-democracy movement looked like proof that the new dawn was real.
Thirty-three years later, the paper still prints. Its website still updates. Its masthead still carries the slogan. But the aura is gone and everyone in Kathmandu knows it.
The decline is not editorial in the narrow sense. It is financial as well as political; and it has hollowed out the Post from the inside. Kantipur Media Group, the paper’s owner, was running an annual loss of more than Rs600 million when Sambhav Sirohiya took over leadership a few years ago. Recent reforms, he claimed, had put the company “on the verge of profitability”.
That claim deserves scrutiny. In April Sirohiya resigned, not over the numbers but over the journalism. He objected to Kantipur’s reporting on Home Minister Sudan Gurung’s suspicious financial dealings, calling the stories “sensational and sloppy” and suggesting they amounted to “mission journalism”. The managing director of Nepal’s largest media group quit because his own reporters were doing their jobs too well.
The timing was exquisite. Anup Kaphle (pictured), who led the Post as editor-in-chief from 2018 to 2020 and was credited with deepening its commitment to investigative journalism, returned in March as KMG’s first Group Editorial Director. He had spent two decades abroad, most recently running Rest of World, a nonprofit publication covering technology in the Global South. He came home to a group that had just lost its managing director over a story it had published. If Kaphle thought he was returning to save journalism, he may have underestimated what he was walking into.
The financial picture is grim. Newspaper advertising revenue in Nepal has collapsed by half since the pandemic. The entire national advertising market, once worth Rs15 billion, has shrunk to perhaps Rs7 billion. Kantipur’s daily ad revenue likewise plummeted significantly during the pandemic. The Shah government briefly made things worse this year by directing all public advertising to state-owned media, a move KMG’s management called “a good move” while withdrawing from the Nepal Media Society in protest. Private media lost a revenue stream. The government gained leverage. The Post gained nothing.
The Post’s staff have paid the price. The paper has shed reporters in waves, leaving survivors to pick up the workload and, in many cases, go months without pay. A 2026 survey of 27 working journalists across Nepali media found salary arrears stretching from two months to nearly a year. When Suresh Rajak, a journalist at Avenues Television, died on assignment in March 2025, he had not received a paycheck in ten months. His employer settled only after public outrage. This is the industry Kaphle has returned to lead.
The generational consequences are already seen. Journalism classrooms across Nepal are emptying out. The number of schools offering journalism at grades 11 and 12 fell from 209 in 2022-23 to 105 in 2026-27. Student enrolment dropped from 4,303 to 1,303 over the same period. At Tribhuvan University, bachelor’s-level enrolment in journalism and mass communication fell from 2,760 in 2020-21 to 1,132 in 2024-25. Only 7% of journalism graduates now enter the profession. The pipeline of reporters who might one day hold power to account is drying up.
The political environment has turned hostile. Nepal recorded 101 incidents of press freedom violations between July 2025 and July 2026, affecting 119 journalists. Threats accounted for the largest share, followed by 27 physical attacks. The Nepali Army has warned of legal action over “misleading content,” casting a wide net that threatens legitimate investigative journalism. The Prime Minister has avoided the press since taking office. In April a municipal police officer grabbed a Kantipur Daily reporter by the arm and demanded he delete footage of evicted landless squatters. When the reporter questioned the legal basis, the response was a phrase that has become the administration’s signature: “Orders from above”.
Kaphle’s response has been to ask readers to pay. In August KMG launched Kantipur One, a reader-revenue strategy that raises print prices and introduces digital subscriptions. “Kantipur has never asked its readers before,” Kaphle wrote. “This is what allows us to invest in more reporters, more editors, more investigations and better journalism”. It is a brave bet. Nepal’s digital subscription market is embryonic. Readers accustomed to free news may not pay. But the alternative—dependence on a government that flirts with choking private advertising and a business class that punishes unfriendly coverage—is worse.
The bigger problem is not Kaphle’s to solve alone. Nepal’s media market is too small and too fragmented for purely commercial solutions. The country has more than 4,000 registered outlets and an advertising pie that cannot feed them. Government advertising, even if fairly distributed, would compromise independence. Philanthropy is dismal. The Press Council, which should adjudicate complaints without police raids, lacks the authority and independence to do so.
What remains is political will. The Electronic Transactions Act, which criminalises online speech, needs reform. The government should stop treating journalists as adversaries and start treating them as what they are: the last line of defence against the corruption that hollows out democracies from within. The army’s vague warnings about “misleading content” need to be withdrawn or clarified. The Press Council needs teeth.
Kaphle’s return is the best news The Kathmandu Post has had in years. It may also be the last chance. If a journalist of his calibre cannot make the economics work, if the political pressure proves too great, if the readers do not pay, the paper that promised to publish without fear or favour will keep printing. It will just have nothing left to say. ■
