(WAN/IFEX) – Belarussian newspapers will get advice from veterans about how to do business in authoritarian regimes at a workshop co-sponsored by the World Association of Newspapers (WAN). The session, set for 2 to 4 October 1998 in Minsk, will concentrate on setting up alternative distribution systems and organizing a publishers association for regional newspapers. […]
(WAN/IFEX) – Belarussian newspapers will get advice from veterans about how
to do business in authoritarian regimes at a workshop co-sponsored by the
World
Association of Newspapers (WAN).
The session, set for 2 to 4 October 1998 in Minsk, will concentrate on
setting up alternative distribution systems and organizing a publishers
association for regional newspapers. Experts will come from Russia, Poland,
and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Other speakers include publishers
from within Belarus who have success in local distribution.
“We are fortunate to have a growing number of people who have faced
first-hand — and overcome — the difficulties the Belarussians now
confront,” said Dr. Aralynn Mcmane, the WAN Director of Educational
Programmes. “Distribution is especially crucial as government domination
makes it pretty simple to keep the independent press out of the hands of
readers.”
Speakers from outside Belarus include Jakob Jackowski, Director of
Distribution for Poland’s former underground paper, “Gazeta Wyborcza”;
Nastasa Vuckovich-Lesendric, General Manager of “TransPress”, a news
distribution company founded by a Belgrade publishers association; Lloyd
Donaldson of “RusMedia”, who helped set up that Belgrade company; Anatolij
Cebulski, Director of Poland’s “Marat Press”; and Pavle Curovic, President
of the Local Press Publishers Association in the Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia.
Partners in the effort are The Council of Europe, Strasbourg, and the
Institute for Democracy in Eastern Europe, Warsaw.
WAN, the global association of the newspaper industry, defends and promotes
press freedom and the economic independence of newspapers as an essential
condition of that freedom. Its membership includes 55 national newspaper
publishers associations, individual newspaper executives in 90 countries,
seven regional press organizations and 17 news agencies world-wide.
