Rzeczpospolita (newspaper)
| File:Rzeczpospolita logo.png | |
Front page from an April 2006 edition | |
| Format | Compact |
|---|---|
| Owner(s) | Presspublica |
| Editor | Paweł Lisicki |
| Founded | 1920 (revised at 1944 and 1980) |
| Political alignment | Liberal conservatism |
| Language | Polish |
| Headquarters | Warsaw |
| Circulation | 160,000 |
| ISSN | 0208-9130 |
| OCLC number | 264077858 |
| Website | www.rp.pl |
Rzeczpospolita (Polish pronunciation: [ʐɛt͡ʂpɔsˈpɔlʲita] ) is a Polish national daily newspaper, with a circulation around of 160,000. Issued every day except Sunday. Rzeczpospolita was printed in broadsheet format, then switched to compact at October 16, 2007.[1] Its title is a traditional name of the Polish State, usually referred to as Rzeczpospolita Polska.
History
A newspaper with this title was issued for the first time in 1920. Initially, it was an organ of conservative Christian-National Party. With time it became an independent newspaper, owned by Ignacy Jan Paderewski and Wojciech Korfanty, two notable politicians from that epoch. The editor in chief, Stanisław Stroński maintained a high quality of published texts, mainly thanks to a wide group of associates. Among them were Adolf Nowaczyński, Kornel Makuszyński and Władysław Witwicki. Despite the gained popularity, it had to be sold to Dom Prasy Katolickiej (House of Catholic Press) in 1930, and two years afterwards was merged with a right-wing daily Polak-Katolik, published by the Catholic Church.
In 1944, a Soviet-led administration was established behind the lines of the Soviet Army and started the propaganda activities directed against a former Nazi German occupation forces in order to gain the favour of the Polish society. They started, under the name Rzeczpospolita, a newspaper dedicated for propaganda purposes in an attempt to establish more legitimacy for the newly formed, Soviet dependent government. And so. despite the fact that the Polish population's attitude was vehemently anti-communist, the new government newspaper began strenuous efforts for amending that adverse disposition. Headed by Jerzy Borejsza, it was in fact an organ of the Polish Committee of National Liberation. In 1949, after the founding of the Polish United Workers' Party (called Party), which published its own central organ named Trybuna Ludu (People's Tribune), these two newspapers had been issued simultaneously by nearly two years. In 1950, Rzeczpospolita was discontinued, because co-existence of a party and the government newspaper was considered as unnecessary within a consolidated one-party state.
In 1980, the situation has changed radically. The state was in crisis, and the Party's image was destroyed, beyond repair. This inspired the idea to relaunch a separate government newspaper. The state, as an entity, became officially independent from the Party (even though this independence was, of course, largely fictitious within a communist state). Thus, from 1982 onwards, Rzeczpospolita and Trybuna Ludu resumed their parallel existence as official bulletins of the government and the Party apparatus respectively.
This dualism corresponded to the situation in the Soviet Union, where the government newspaper Izvestia functioned alongside the Party's Pravda, and where Izvestia has steered a course strikingly similar to Rzeczpospolita's in the 1990s.
After the 1989 revolution, the new Polish government released Rzeczpospolita into independence in 1991, forming a Franco-Polish joint venture named Presspublica S.A. to publish the paper. In 1996, the Norwegian Orkla Media corporation acquired a 51% share in Presspublica, and is now in joint control of a quarter of the entire Polish press landscape.
From 1989 until his death in 1996, the well-known journalist Dariusz Fikus was the first editor-in-chief of the independent Rzeczpospolita, followed by Piotr Aleksandrowicz (1996–2000), Maciej Łukasiewicz (2000–2004), Grzegorz Gauden (2004–2006), and Paweł Lisicki (since September 2006).
Main features
Rzeczpospolita's distinctive, editorial feature is division into three thematic sections with different colors for each of them: the news section is white, the business section is green and the legal section is yellow. Apart from these daily sections, there are several supplements appearing once or twice per week, such as cars and real estate, careers, TV, travel. On Saturdays, the paper is supplemented with a section entitled PlusMinus for essays on politics, history, and culture, often invited from well-known authors, which reflect a broad spectrum of opinions. In addition to comprehensive daily legal and financial reports, Rzeczpospolita frequently publishes rankings on companies, institutions and government authorities, and claims to be most influential newspaper among Polish economic elites and political decision-makers.
Political profile
Rzeczpospolita's political profile is moderately conservative and arguably comparable to that of The Times in Britain. It should be noted, however, that contemporary Rzeczpospolita reveals a moderately national taste – such as when trying to defend the Polish raison d'etat during the historical debates about Polish-German and Polish-Russian relations. Well as, is rather adversary of the social-liberal Gazeta Wyborcza, and frankly speaking, do not favor any particular party in the political landscape of Poland.
Major events
In early 2005, Rzeczpospolita found itself at the very centre of a heated public debate, after one of its employees, the former dissident and journalist Bronisław Wildstein, abstracted a list with the names of 240,000 informers and victims of the communist secret police from the Institute of National Remembrance and distributed it among colleagues. In the wake of the incident, Wildstein was dismissed from Rzeczpospolita (cf. the article Wildstein's List in the Polish Wikipedia).
In 2006 the US-based Society for News Design voted Rzeczpospolita and British daily The Guardian as the best-designed newspapers in the world, choosing them from 389 entries from 44 countries.[2]
See also
References
- ^ "Experts estimate the new format of Rzeczpospolita" (in Polish). wirtualnemedia.pl.
- ^ "Guardian wins design award". media.guardian.co.uk.
External links
- Official website (Polish only)
- The Times site