Broadcasters, publishers move quickly to cover U.S. tragedy

By : Robert Wójcik

    Read all about it: Newsweek Polska delivers a 16-page special edition the day after the attack on the United States.

   Last week’s terrorist attack against the United States prompted local media to launch coverage of the tragedy just moments after the first hijacked jetliner crashed into New York’s World Trade Center.

   TVN24, a news channel launched in August, was among the first stations to broadcast the event as it unfolded. “We used Reuters and APTM feeds,” said Anna Traczewska, PR director at TVN24, last week. “They are our partner news agencies. We covered the attacks live, followed by their aftermath until this very moment.”

   Meanwhile, Axel Springer, the German publisher of Newsweek Polska, had a special-edition issue on the streets less than 24 hours after the attack. “We printed 500,000 copies of a 16-page special edition,” said Marzena Daszkiewicz, PR director at Axel Springer. “Most of the pictures came from Newsweek’s U.S. newsroom.”

   Gruner+Jahr Polska, the German publisher of the women’s weekly, Gala, also had a special edition on newsstands the day after the attack. Rzeczpospolita, one of the country’s most prestigious dailies, printed additional copies of its Wednesday edition and handed them out free Tuesday night at restaurants, train stations and airports in Warsaw and Poznań.

   Newsweek Polska appears to be outstripping its rival weeklies Polityka and Wprost in sales and circulations.

   The magazine’s publisher, Germany’s Axel Springer, printed 500,000 copies of Newsweek Polska last week, up from 450,000 for its inaugural issue.

   “We sold some 50,000 copies more than Polityka or Wprost did,” said Marzena Daszkiewicz, PR director at Axel Springer. But Andrzej Wasilewski, head of sales for Polityka, said he couldn’t provide any credible circulation data for the week Newsweek was launched. “All I have are sales figures from August when we sold 250,000 copies of Polityka out of a print run of 368,000,” he said. “It usually takes 14-21 days before we can get the necessary data from our 20 distributors.”

   At press time last week, the distribution watchdog, Zwišzek Kontroli i Dystrybucji Prasy, had only second-quarter sales figures available. Publishers have up to two months to forward their figures to the office.

   German publisher H.Bauer, which had planned to launch a Polish weekly of its own, has abandoned the idea, said Jerzy Weber, publisher of Tele Tydzień, a TV guide and one of the most popular H. Bauer publications in Poland.

   “Yes, we decided not to launch this project, but it’s not because Newsweek’s first issue was such a great success, it’s because we were apparently going in the same direction as Newsweek (in terms of the magazine’s design and content),” Weber said. “I thought that Newsweek Polska would be more similar to the U.S. edition but it turned out that 80% of its coverage refers to Poland. So with such a strong brand it put us in a really difficult situation.”

   Axel Springer, the German publisher of Newsweek Polska, had toyed with the idea of coming up with a Polish name for the magazine, but public opinion surveys convinced the company not to tamper with such a well-known brand. “It (the project) was developing at a very slow pace and it was we in Poland, not the board in Germany, that decided to suspend it,” Weber said.

   Piotr Aleksandrowicz, former editor in chief of Rzeczpospolita daily and in charge of the project, will stay on with the company and work in its new ventures division. However, six people employed with the weekly will be let go after their contracts expire at the end of this year, Weber said.

   Meanwhile, H.Bauer is working on a weekly business magazine. According to Weber, because there are fewer competitors in the business-weekly segment of the market, the project is coming along well. The publisher has also started work on a computer monthly, but Weber was reluctant to reveal any further information about the projects.

   Warsaw-based RPR Group, one of the first Polish PR firms when it set up in 1994, unveiled results last week of its survey on journalists’ perceptions of PR agencies.

   According to Beata Paczyńska, director of development strategy at RPR Group, the survey has revealed a lack of professionalism on the part of many PR firms. “We can’t, for example, write a simple press release, or at press conferences organized by us we don’t often announce the news that journalists expect,” Paczyńska said. “PR in Poland is very young and it really needs a code of ethics, or standards and rules for all PR agencies to abide by.”

   In Poland, public relations firms are often accused of buying favors from journalists. At the same time, many publishers do not forbid journalists from accepting gifts. According to the survey, one-third of respondents said PR agencies have tried to bribe them. Two-thirds said they usually accept gifts distributed at PR events but that their value should be limited. “Small gifts, which aren’t really a form of corruption, should be acceptable, but something has to be done about the expensive trips for journalists, which we all know do happen,” Paczyńska said. She also said that media corruption may stem from the fact that PR agencies are heavily pressured by their clients. “They often want you to prepare a detailed list of newspapers where stories about their company will be run,” she said. “Any means is fine as long as you have the highest possible number of newspapers writing about you in a favorable way.”

   In mid-November, RPR Group is planning to hold Publicon, a seminar about relations among journalists, PR agencies and their clients.

   Agora this month started its new method of distributing its flagship newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza – by street vendor. But for the majority of Varsovians, the sight of dozens of newspaper vendors peddling the daily on street corners and at traffic lights around the city is not altogether new.

   Agnieszka Pietraszek of Agora’s PR office said it’s too early to say how this “new” distribution channel may impact the sales of Gazeta Wyborcza in the capital. Meanwhile, Metropol, the free daily that was launched last year, has signed an exclusive contract with Warsaw authorities to place its newspaper racks on metro stations and bus stops around the capital. Metropol so far has 8% of the Warsaw ad revenue market and hopes to attain 10% by the end of this year. “Out of 660,000 people reading newspapers in Warsaw every day, 140,000 are reading Metropol,” said Rene Frey, managing director of TPP, the paper’s publisher.