Jaunted

Sure, we made some mistakes, but we felt that it was our duty to adhere to western-style standards of journalism, valuing objectivity above all and providing an example of how news ought to be done to a population emerging from decades of Soviet propaganda. After working at the paper for two years, I moved to New York, still buzzing from the experience and determined to take my journalism career stateside.

Sadly, things at the old paper appear to have gone downhill from there, if the recently-departed editorial staff is to be believed. A few years after I left, The Baltic Observer merged with a rival newspaper called The Baltic Independent, yielding The Baltic Times, and the entire Times editorial staff just up and quit to form another newspaper called Baltic Reports. According to the staffers, they walked out in protest of not being paid in four months, and because they were being forced to write articles that favored advertisers.

This is both troubling and comforting at the same time. It's troubling because - if the charges are true - it's one more example of business interests trumping a newspaper's editorial mission to serve its readers by presenting them with the unbiased truth. Pretty much every corporate owner of a newspaper would love its writers to cozy up to advertisers a bit more, but the smart ones have enough vision to realize that eventually the arrangement would result in a loss of readers' trust.

But it's heartening that the staff still has enough idealism left in them to start over and report the news the right way, as free from undue influence as possible. I commend them and wish them luck in their new endeavor. I can't help but think that the offices of the new Baltic Reports might somehow resemble the Baltic Observer I walked into 17 years ago.

[Photo: infohostels.com]

Related Stories:
· Baltic Journalists Refuse to Take It Anymore [UTNE Reader]
· News Staff of The Baltic Times Quits, but Weekly to Continue [Latvians Online]
· Baltic Reports [Official Site]
· Newspapers [Jaunted]