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Not worth the paper they're written on

by Andrei Postelnicu
February 2005

It is both ironic and sad that, like the members of the Nastase-PSD government it helped unseat, much of the Evenimentul Zilei newsroom had to look for new jobs at the same time. However, the hand-wringing over the submission of yet another beacon of journalistic courage in Romania is at least partially unwarranted.

Now that the foam at so many mouths has hopefully been wiped off, it is time to call a spade a spade: Evenimentul Zilei wasn’t that good. Courageous? Yes! Unflinching in its anti-PSD coverage? Absolutely! But that does not a good newspaper make.

Not unlike Romania Libera, that other haven of journalistic excellence ostensibly subdued by nefarious interests, and not far behind Adevarul, Evenimentul Zilei has been a lamentable editorial product for far too long. Which could explain the reasons why its owners wanted to shake it up, even though it might not excuse their way to do it.

Yes, lamentable. The minutes from the PSD meetings, and some other great articles printed in EvZ, were admirable reflections of courage in the face of an Orwellian political machine. But they were incoherently written, barely edited, and we got more of them than what we needed.

A bit like the Fatah movement in Palestine, EvZ has been waging an intifada against the PSD in an editorially bloody, incoherent and strident way. While admiring the guts to print some of the stuff they did, I kept wondering what they were going to do in the absence of something to shout at, of something to criticise.

I do not really care why Ringier did what it did, nor do I care why WAZ did what it did at Romania Libera. That is beside the point. The situation at these two newspapers and the way it has been perceived reflects a deeper crisis in the Romanian media.

So appalling are the editorial standards of most Romanian media outlets that stridence is often mistaken for excellence. Just look at the luminaries held in high esteem. Most of them have probably never written an actual news article, or anything even feigning objectivity. The most admired so-called journalists are really one-trick ponies: they can produce some cleverly worded, vehement, opinion-based editorials, many of which are fun to read in limited doses. But ask these people to edit an entire paper, coordinate coverage coherently, manage staff - in short, be journalistic leaders, and you have another thing coming.

What makes me so sure? Just look at the actual newspapers on sale at any Bucharest newsstand. With precious few exceptions such as Cotidianul, which excels in some other things as well in its latest incarnations, most national papers in Romania look like they’ve been designed by a skateboarder high on Red Bull and acid. Aside from the fact that they look terrible, the articles they contain show scant evidence of actual editing for grammar, style, or content. The inevitable result is that most articles are poorly written, too long, and incoherent. The pages housing them have very little unity or sense of direction. And the papers made by those pages also lack an overall coherence that gives a newspaper its identity, its presence in the market.

Ah, the market. There’s a novel concept in the Romanian press. As the Evenimentul Zilei and Romania Libera debacles unfolded, many of the journalists being quoted were speaking with disdain of and showing evident ignorance about the basic commercial underpinnings of the publishing/media industry. More stunningly, I’ve heard of another Romanian journalistic legend saying the minute the market no longer buys his products, he’ll close the shop and send everybody home. This, from a paper purporting to be one of Romania’s most important.

The disdain for journalism as a profitable enterprise comes largely from the fact that many of the journalists that emerged after the 1989 coup – since we’re calling spades' spades – only ended up thereafter being educated to do something else, often something not in the least connected to journalism, because there were no good journalism courses during communism. In addition, throughout Romania's history, journalism has gained this patina of adventure; it was something that Romania's prominent literary figures engaged in alongside writing poems to fight injustices.

As a result, many of the journalists currently practising in Romania - and the society they serve - have little notion of journalism as an actual profession. Thanks in part to Romania's onerous labour laws, most are hired under dubious terms, often with no claim to benefits and burdened by all sorts of agreements. This makes for a picaresque but volatile framework in which the job is done. Newsrooms do not feel like they are part of an enterprise. More often than not, egos reign supreme, which is why editing can be a heresy – after all, people get so attached to their copy that every word is precious. (''What do you mean this doesn't make sense?'')

Part of the problem besetting the media has to do with Romania's broader business environment and its Balkan habits. However, this will only change once a fresh generation of journalists comes of age and introduces the notion of a professional media in Romania, with all the habits coming with it. In the meantime Romanians are suffering at the mercy of a frothy, strident and ultimately lame excuse for a press. And that includes Evenimentul Zilei.

Andrei Postelnicu writes for the Financial Times from its New York bureau and for Vivid in a personal capacity