People in Poland believe that reading a newspaper will soon become “an elite occupation like smoking a cigar.”
Numerous meetings at the Polish leading television, radio, newspapers, magazines and information agencies were organized for Armenian journalists visiting Poland.
“Gazeta Wyborcza” newspaper is one of the most popular newspapers in Poland, which, a few years ago had one million 500 000 circulation, today it reaches to 200 000. It is one of the first independent newspaper that was established in 1989 during the first fair elections, and it’s name is associated with this historic election. “Gazeta Wyborcza” has a left-centrist orientation. The building, where the main editorial office of the newspaper was located, was huge, with a great cafeteria so that the staff will not lose time on having a break. The Deputy of the editor-in-chief of “Gazeta Wyborcza” Roman Imielski tells that in addition to the main issue, 22 annexes are issued, and the reader, depending on its preferences, buys the necessary amount of annexes, paying different prices for the newspaper. The annexes touch upon various topics: specific regional, as well as cultural, topics related to women, travel, advertising and so on.
The package of each issue of the newspaper, thus, can get to 200 pages. Around 800 employees were working in the main editorial building, some of them were working both on the website and the newspaper, but some, exclusively, on the newspaper. Total number of reporters and editors reached to 750, one editor was working for every five or six reporters. Throughout the country, there are separate editorials of “Gazeta Wyborcza “, the pages from 8-15 refer to the Polish provinces. The newspaper without annexes is 32-40 pages. The newspaper has its three printing houses in Poland. In every city out of Warsaw, there are editorial offices, but they have all in all four correspondents in Moscow, Brussels, Washington and Belarus, one in each. If interesting events happen, the reporters are sent to business trips, like, for example, during the Russian-Georgian war in 2008. Visitors to the website are readers of 20-45 years old, but above 45 are the readers of the newspaper. However, the newspaper seems to have stopped dropping recently, – noted Roman Imielski
adding that “rumors about the death of print media are over time.” He noted that the advantage of their daily is to provide reliable information, in other words, not only provide information, but also in-depth analysis and investigative materials. With regard to the requirements of advertisers, according to deputy editor, they are different, now videos and ads posted on Smartphones are far more common.
It is noteworthy, however, that the amounts received from advertising ads are considered to be negligible in Poland. Roman Imielski noted that less money is received from online advertising. “It is not possible to survive with web advertising, it is cheaper, meanwhile the amounts paid for newspaper advertisements are quite respectable. For example, the price for a full page of ad on the third page of the newspaper for one day only is about 25 000 dollars.” To the question whether there have many such “respectable” price range advertizing offers, the deputy editor-in-chief of “Gazeta Wyborcza” replied: “Quite often.”
Although, for now, the material placed on the site are free, but in the nearest future, the editorial staff envisages to be paid for the materials along with some free materials, but the subscription fee will be less than the price of the newspaper. Roman Imielski thinks that the newspaper will be a long time in Poland, and he does not rule out that the time for Smartphones and IPads will also vanish, and newspaper reading will again be considered just as an elite occupation, as reading on Smartphones and IPads is in fashion nowadays. He told that the newspaper has a problem of dissemination, because the places where newspapers are sold become less and less, and the print newspaper subscription in Poland does not generally work: this is a thinking rooted in the communist era, when people no longer trusted print media and were thinking that the papers do not tell the truth, therefore they did not subscribe.
Also found out that, in contrast to Armenia where the majority of sites are translated into Russian and English, the website of such newspaper with huge circulation is not translated, it is only in Polish, and this is in the case that the Polish have more than 10 million Diaspora: 6 million live in the U.S., 2 million in the UK, and 10-15% of them are the main visitors of the site.
As in Armenia, here also the newspaper reporters have their anonymous sources whom they trust and referring to them they write articles, however, the reporter has to verify the information received from at least two sources, after which it will appear in the newspaper, but in no case they disclose the sources: “If not the anonymous sources, half of the newspaper material could not publish. We, as a newspaper, have become the reason of
resignation of several ministers and the Prime Minister. In a democratic country, free press is a powerful weapon against the government. Although we have our sympathy to this or that official, but we can not afford to write only positive about this official, because in this case we will lose the reader’s trust and confidence in us to give reliable information, especially today, when many sites may publish every stupid thing. Now the credibility is important to every media, and it may lose the reputation in one instant. Propaganda can instantly kill any of the media,”- said Roman Imielski.
The reporter of “Gazeta Wyborcza” Marchi Voychehovski, who has followed and covered the problems of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union countries for 15 years, believes that traditional media have lost their value, the circulation is dropping, earlier, when leading newspapers were having more than one million copies, today, their circulation had been significantly reduced to 250-270 thousand. “Traditional media is going away, but the system of online advertising sites is not defined, the mechanisms of making money on internet are not yet effective. Reading the newspaper will soon become an elite occupation like smoking a cigar.”
Emma GABRIELYAN
Kraków
