In the year 1958, a shoemaker named Vincent Kwasi 'Holiday' Komedja established his own Ewe-language newspaper (Ablode Safui / the Key to Freedom) in the small cocoa-marketing town of Kpalime in French Togoland. In the ensuing years, Komedja commented on a dizzying array of local, national and international events, presenting them in different ways and drawing his own connections between them. These events included the ending of United Nations trusteeship and French administration in Togoland, the rise and fall of the new Republic's first independent government, a tightening of regulation over the press, and diminishing scope for political debate and dissent. Elsewhere, we have commented on the peculiar valence of newsprint in the era of new nationhood, as people navigated between different scales and meanings of citizenship and belonging, and worked through competing ideas about public information, political authority and accountability, and the possibilities for constructive opposition. In this paper, however, we will focus on the use of names in Komedja's newspaper, applying insights from Karin's Barber's work on personhood, publics and print. We will identify connections between the aspirational nature of literary practices in rural West Africa, distinctive forms of authorial authority, and the propensity of newspapers not only to 'name and shame' but also to initiate processes of redemption through the judicious distribution of praise.