This book is a manual for newspaper managers and journalists in emerging democracies on how to establish, manage and run a publishing company and a newspaper.

The ideas included in the manual are connected with a nonexistent newspaper called the New Times. The New Times model is based on practices of several newspapers and publishing companies that really do or did operate in Central and East Europe.

At the beginning, the New Times is a weekly newspaper of eight pages in an imaginary city called New Castle. Later on, this weekly targeting at general audience will be transformed into a specialized business weekly. Its volume will be expanding step by step up to 48 pages. Finally, the weekly will be transformed into a daily newspaper published six times a week.

The book is based on the author’s experience in establishing, transforming and running business newspapers in Slovakia, and consulting independent newspapers in East Europe and East Africa. Her direct experience is supported or balanced by practices of newspaper managers both in mature and emerging democracies and by generally acknowledged managerial theories.

In emerging democracies, media censorship as the main constraint to freedom of speech is replaced, largely, by economic pressure. To be independent and viable on their own, newspapers need to diminish their dependence on subsidies of any kind. Independence is tightly linked to profitability. Profits make newspapers strong enough to face the power of the state, political parties, businesses, churches, and unions.

Tatiana Repkova

With limited previous experience with the phenomenon of independence, and sometimes none at all, journalists in emerging democracies often believe that having gotten rid of government control, they have gotten rid of all control; they are not subject to control by anyone, including the newspaper’s managers.

Publishers and editors in chaotic societies of emerging democracies need to set up a new system, since previous rules have gone. However, they do not have enough time to go back to school and study media theories. In fact, most available theory books based on or designed for media managers in developed market economies may be unnecessarily complicated for those taking a first step in a new direction.

This book is different. This book focuses on how to establish, manage and run a newspaper in a society that is in transition between an authoritarian or totalitarian past and a democratic present and future. It is quite specific in this regard, and its examples are drawn from real-life experience in countries experiencing such transition.

T. Repkova

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