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Women: International
supported the 1990 reforms, even when
it meant a showdown with Walesa,
who was running against Solidarity
economic reformers in the November
1990 presidential campaign on a plank
to give every Pole an ownership stake
in socialist enterprises. (A similar
voucher privatization program was subsequently
tried in the Czech Republic
with disastrous results.) Gazeta
Wyborcza backed the reformers, not
Walesa, and he later demanded that
the editors remove the Solidarity logo.
In retrospect, that was the start of
the paper’s real independence—even
if they were not out of the woods
financially. Luczywo and Rapaczynski
agreed they needed a foreign investor
to help finance rapid growth. “Our
goal was to get ‘clean’ money that
wouldn’t be a political obligation,” said
Rapaczynski. This was easier said than
done. Poland’s reforms today get much
praise, but back then the country was
seen as a black hole and investors didn’t
want to be around for factory-floor
showdowns over layoffs.
Agora had been created as a parent
for the paper. Owners of The New York
Review of Books loaned them $300,000
in 1990 for printing supplies. But most
banks and venture capitalists turned
them down. Rapaczynski’s daughter
wrote 400 letters to U.S. foundations
but got back mostly questions—including
“how long will this freedom last?”
Foreign media magnates wanted
control with their investment. One rebuffed
investor was Italy’s current president
(and media baron) Silvio
Berlusconi’s Fininvest media. The
breakthrough came in 1993, when the
Atlanta-based Cox Enterprises Inc. took
a 12.3 percent stake in Agora, paving
the way for eight million dollars in debt
financing from the European Bank for
Reconstruction and Development
(EBRD). They paid back the 1990 loan,
built a $21 million printing plant, and
computerized the newspaper. By 1995,
they started buying radio stations and
proved the skeptics wrong by successfully
adapting a “golden oldies” format
used by Cox.
Today, the newspaper has 19 local
editions and 11 special sections including
two quality magazines:
Magazyn and High Heels (Wysocki i
Obcasy) targeted to the interests of
women. Rapaczynski has a $340 million
acquisition pot. Luczywo left editing
two years ago to prepare the Agora
Internet portal, which was launched in
early 2001.
Agora’s 1999 public offering raised
$93 million with part of the money
going for stock options to 1,500 of the
3,000 workers, based on seniority, who
could buy shares for one zloty (about
25 cents). When they could sell two
years later, the shares had gone up to zl
104 (about 25 dollars).
But the Agora saga is not just about
money. Many promising startups from
1990 fell apart because of the “culture”
inherited from state socialism. “It was
really difficult for many of us to switch
from working in informal groups, as
members of the underground, to learn
to work in big organizations and then
a big corporation,” said Luczywo. The
challenge was “getting out of the fog,
so to speak,” says Rapaczynski. “This
organization doesn’t lack in intelligence,
but if that translates into everybody
talking, that’s a lot of wasted air.”
Her mantra was “focus, focus.” She
also imported Western solutions and
scoffed at arguments that Poland was
“different” and had to shape a homegrown
remedy.
Rapaczynski was struck by the different
“levels of self-confidence. One thing
you will never hear from an American
team and was heard here all the time
[in 1990] was ‘this can’t be done’—‘nie
mosliwa.’ I finally said I wouldn’t stand
for that phrase. And let’s think about
how it can be done.” This approach
paid off when tabloids and fancy magazines
began to siphon off customers. At
Gazeta, they’d established a framework
for correcting mistakes. And there were
plenty of them, from too-high newsstand
prices to passive “order-takers”
on the advertising staff. Then there was
the two million-dollar “image advertising”
campaign that Rapaczynski concluded
“was a total waste of money.”
Circulation didn’t go up. “We learned
the hard way,” she said.
The editors also got wakeup calls. As
Poles put together “normal” lives, their
overriding passion for politics waned.
However, in time, Gazeta Wyborcza
learned to connect with readers on
issues far afield of Luczywo’s passion
for politics—on such mundane issues
as finding jobs, cars, homes and the
accoutrements that the “acquisitional”
Poles insisted on having. They also
learned to listen better to core concerns
of readers about this transition.
The turning point was a
groundbreaking series on maternity
hospitals. A male editor (and new father)
suggested that readers tell them
their “birthing” experiences. An outpouring
of horror stories resulted about
poor facilities and demeaning attitudes.
There had been reports of this before—feminists
had had a seminar on
“totalitarian practices in maternity hospitals”—but
the Gazeta Wyborcza series
made this a national issue the policy
chiefs had to address.
Has this media empire run by two
women made a difference for women
in Poland? Opinions differ. Poles probably
underestimate the impact of a
commitment of resources needed to
produce a high-caliber women’s magazine.
Few Western papers have done
this. Rapaczynski wanted to snare more
women readers but, even more, to give
advertisers a vehicle to reach women,
“specifically for beauty and fashion.”
And, she says, “we see a very nice fit.”
High Heels, the magazine supplement,
boosted Saturday newspaper sales by
eight percent its first year.
High Heels is far more than a fashion
magazine, however. Cover stories
feature women with wrinkles, not just
under-30 beauties. Feminists write columns.
Cutting-edge issues get explored
at length, along with health and fitness
pieces that advertisers prefer. But
Rapaczynski says “we finally are beginning
to show our feminist face—which
is long overdue.”
Maybe. Women’s rights groups say
the newspaper is unpredictable and
ignores many key issues, for instance
the reasons why far more women are
unemployed than men (including
women who held 80 percent of jobs in
the decrepit textile garment industries
that have disappeared with the loss of
the Russian market and influx of Chinese
imports) and the formidable work
Nieman Reports / Winter 2001 81