Newspaper vendors have called on the federal government to save their businesses from going extinct by limiting the scope of online publications.

Emeka Nweze, the Chairman of the Anambra Newspaper Distribution Association in Awka made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Awka on Saturday.

Mr. Nweze said that activities of online media publications have taken a huge toll on the newspaper sales and led to low patronage from customers.

“This development has seriously threatened our businesses as we hardly sell up to 100 papers in a day,” he said.

He told NAN that he used to sell all the newspaper stock in a day, but people prefer to source news from online publications these days without verifying their authenticity.

“Our businesses are presently sustained by paid advertorials, job vacancy placements and other forms of advertorials.

“We earnestly hope for a change in fortunes and still believe that newspapers have more merits than online publications.

“Government should consider the fact that newspaper vendors depend on commissions and when newspapers are not sold, they might be induced to seek alternative means of survival,” he said.

He said that he had been engaged in newspaper sales for 34 years and has not experienced the sort of ‘sales drought’ currently being experienced.

Also, Ms. Nancy Okoye, another newspaper vendor also told NAN in an interview that the government could enact laws that would sustain newspaper sales while enabling online publications to thrive.

“I appeal to news publishers to curtail their online publications among other news contents, to keep newspaper vendors in business,” she said.

Okey Ifebunna, an ardent newspaper reader, told NAN that he has sustained his newspapers readership to verify the news sourced from online publications.

“I agree that it is easier to access news from online sources, but efforts should be intensified to verify their sources in order to check the spread of fake news,” he said.