Rekonstrukcja zdarzeń, czyli początki niezależnego dziennikarstwa i prasy lokalnej w Wielkopolsce po roku 1989, na przykładzie „Tygodnika Kępińskiego” (Część 2)
THE RECONSTRUCTION OF EVENTS: ORIGINS OF INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM AND LOCAL PAPERS IN WIELKOPOLSKA AFTER 1989 - A CASE STUDY OF ”TYGODNIK KĘPIŃSKI” (PART 2)

Summary/Abstract: The term free Polish press is closely related to the political system changes in 1989. It was after the first free Sejm election (a lower chamber of the Polish parliament) that civic grass-root activities sprang up. As a result, the first independent local papers were established. They operated without censorships realizing freedom of speech. The ideological principles of the passing epoch did not concern them. The oldest weekly in the region of mid-west Poland is an example of the above defined independent civic paper which was founded on the rising tide of system changes. The author of the text contacts the founders of the paper, investigates the sources and the original documents from the political watershed period. He also defines the scope of events important for free press when Poland was coming out of institutional communism. The author presents the social background and political realities of creating the paper, its first successes and failures and its fight for existence. Moreover, he shows in this particular case, how years of subsequent privatisation processes have become the cause of the civic papers' collapse resulting in the overall decline of independent local papers. ”Tygodnik Kępiński” and its 20 - year history is a prime example of this process.

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