Mirel Bran, Bucharest-based journalist
In the year after the fall of President Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989, the number of periodicals published in Romania increased tenfold. Romania also opened up to foreign publications.
A newsstand in Bucharest
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Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. Universal
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‘When Ceausescu was in power, there were a total of 400 magazines and newspapers in the country. I was amazed to see that figure increase tenfold in less than a year.’
Romania’s media landscape
has been revolutionized as a profusion of national and local newspapers have broken
a state monopoly that lasted for 40 years
‘It’s only midday and I’ve already sent 10 e-mails to my colleagues,”
says Anca Suciu, head of communications at “Save the Children”, a Romanian organization
founded in 1991 and now the country’s most active group dealing with abandoned children.
Her colleagues are not very far away however. Their offices are only next door or
on another floor. But computers have become indispensable to the work of this young
team whose average age is 30. Using a network of eight machines, they manage to turn
out an astonishing range of written material for the association’s 6,000 members
scattered all over the world. Magazines, annual reports, studies on homeless children
and gypsy children, handbooks, leaflets, even stickers–anything to get the message
across.
“There’s all this,” says a slightly out-of-breath Suciu, carrying an impressive pile
of documents. “The circulation figures aren’t amazing–they’re usually between 500
and 4,000 copies–but we print everything ourselves.”
Among the quarterly magazines the association puts out, Infocent deals with
helping homeless children, “Info Save the Children” presents the association’s projects,
and “SOS Street Children” carries news about the 700 or so children who roam the
streets of Bucharest. They all contain features, interviews, in-depth reports and
practical information–just like any self-respecting magazine.
“These publications have boosted the association’s standing,” says Suciu. “The doors
of institutions are opening more readily to us now and some of our experimental programmes
have been incorporated in the policies of government bodies.” The association’s database
of very detailed statistics on abandoned children is a real goldmine for institutions
involved in the field. This shows the impact these energetic young people have had
on Romania’s political and social life.
Has new information technology expanded freedom of expression? “It’s done more than
that,” says Suciu. “It’s our guarantee of freedom.”
Romanians have learned to turn IT to their best advantage. Largely due to new technology,
the fortunes of the written press soared after the fall of President Nicolae Ceausescu
in 1989. “When he was in power, there were a total of 400 magazines and newspapers
in the country,” says sociologist Alin Teodorescu. “I was amazed to see that figure
increase tenfold in less than a year.”
In 1990, the unchecked expansion of the press exceeded all expectations and became
a honey-pot for local investors looking for quick profits. The daily paper Adevarul
(“Truth”) was printing 1.8 million copies, România Libera (“Free
Romania”) 1.5 million, and the weeklies sometimes topped a million copies. These
were huge figures for a country of 23 million people.
“The media has been the biggest laboratory of private enterprise in Romania,” says
Teodorescu. “Including advertising revenue, it accounts today for 2.5 per cent of
GDP. If the whole economy was like that, our national income would be higher than
that of Greece.”
The figures speak for themselves. In 1989, there were only 2,500 people working in
the media. Today there are 12,500. About 3,000 modern printing works have replaced
old ones, some of which dated back to 1894. The local capital the media attracted
has been reinvested in computerizing editorial offices.
At the start of the 1990s, paper and power supply were still government-subsidized,
which made production costs low and newspapers very cheap for the public. But low
prices were not the only factor in boosting readership. After nearly 40 years of
silence under the Ceausescu regime, Romanians were hungry for information and any
printed material interested them. Social and political life became an endless source
of hot news, and most intellectuals abandoned their field and turned to the press,
which became a kind of mirage of democracy.
Aware that people also needed to be entertained after being numbed by long years
of boring language, many new papers–big and small, national and local–were unashamedly
lightweight. The yellow press flourished. Commentary and personal opinion, expressed
in language that was often vulgar and sometimes violent and insulting, turned the
press into a battlefield between the reformers and those who looked back nostalgically
to the past.
Competition
from TV
Things began to change
in 1992. Production costs went up, people’s incomes fell and political controversy
lowered the tone. The audiovisual sector was also rapidly taking off and making Romania
into the eastern European leader in the field with, today, 48 television channels
(40 of them local) and 250 radio stations (all but five of them private). As a result,
circulation fell dramatically and the written press had to rethink its strategy.
It has since become more professional, with improved content and presentation. It
has mainly opted for news and left the job of entertainment to television.
“Competition from television was a shock for the press,” says Teodorescu, “especially
when TV made off with 61 per cent of advertising revenues. Today they’re quits, each
of them drawing 50 per cent. Income from advertising has actually risen by about
a fifth every year and is a real powerhouse for the media.
Freedom of expression, the market economy and new technology are the mainsprings
of this extraordinary expansion of the press in Romania, which now has more than
800 publications. They include about 100 dailies, 200 weeklies and 250 monthlies.
Half of the total are local (two-thirds in the case of the dailies). The media run
by voluntary organizations are also flourishing. The success story of “Save the Children”
is by no means unique in post-communist Romania, where thousands of active community
groups are the flesh and bones of the new civil society. Despite the country’s current
material shortages, most of them have computers and print their own material. This
is an astonishing achievement in a country where, a decade ago, most people’s dream
was to buy a typewriter.
This optimism has infected everyone, even the youngest. Two years ago, backed by
“Save the Children”, a quarterly magazine titled “Children’s Thoughts and Voices”
appeared, produced and designed by schoolchildren in Bucharest. These budding journalists
are already learning how to express ideas and share opinions–to communicate freely,
in fact. This is something their parents’ generation had very little opportunity
to do.
