3 new spin-offs of the most popular Romanian Internet site

The “Gazeta Sporturilor” sports sites ring includes three new projects, Blogdeliceu.ro, Pariori.ro and Suporteri.ro, wrote Gusti Roman, the executive director of Gazeta Sporturilor, on his blog. The first one targets high school users, translates ‘high-schoolblog.ro’ and will provide a blog to all the 11 high schools included into a soccer competition. Pariori.ro will provide on-line betting facilities, while Suporteri.ro (’Suporters.ro’), to be launched on Friday, will include a soccer forum.

The three new sites are included into a spin-offs cloud built around the very succesful GSP.ro, the site of one of the two big sports newspapers in Romania, rated the first in terms of audience by Trafic.ro, a well-known public traffic measurement service. The cloud includes team communities such as Stelisti.ro or Dinamovisti.ro and blogs of famous sports journalists.

New director at the Academia Catavencu trust

The Academia Catavencu trust, taken over in may 2006 by the controversial Romanian billionaire Sorin Ovidiu Vîntu, has a new director for the Quality division. Aurelian Amurăriţei will be the publisher of the Academia Caţavencu satire weekly, Cotidianul daily newspaper, Le monde diplomatique Romanian edition and Idei în dialog, an intellectual debate monthly. Some new projects are also expected.

The management structure of the Academia Caţavencu trust includes:

• Sergiu Toader, former project manager at Realitatea Media, Sorin Ovidiu Vîntu’s TV company - content manager of print, radio and TV; Sorin Enache, idem, business manager of the three.
• Sorin Vulpe - president, print & radio (Guerilla - managed by Calin Husar)
• Robert Tătăruş, Realitatea TV news director
• Dragoş Stanca (ex-Mediapro, Adrian Sîrbu) - general director, print
• Aurelian Amurăriţei - director, print, Quality. | More…

Psihologia azi for sale

A source from the top management of the Academia Catavencu press holding denied that Psihologia azi was sold to Academia Catavencu. However, the source confirmed the information given by another source to Comanescu.ro earlier - that Psihologia azi is for sale and Capricorn Media, the independent publisher of the title, started various negociations.

Psihologia azi sells 13,000 copies and has an audience of 93,000 readers, according to the latest BRAT (Romanian ABC) and SNA (National Study of Audience) figures.

Six titles with problems

The daily newspapers in Romania haven’t followed the audience’s taste to the same extent that markets such as women glossies have. The latest editorial content and team changes give the opportunity of a forecast for every title.

Top 3 Libertatea, Jurnalul National and Evenimentul zilei confirm the saying that on the developed media markets in Romania the first three players have a safe evolution. The massive exodus from Libertatea hasn’t yet affected the sold circulation of the newspaper, Jurnalul follows a stable trend after the Logans campaigns, as the second newspaper, and Evenimentul also keeps its position. | More…

MTV Romania ads

2006. Another one: | More…

Local association aiming to become an IAB Europe affiliate

The first general assembly of the IAB Romania Association took place on Thursday, November 23rd. The Association aims to affiliate itself to IAB Europe and to solve problems such as overlayers proliferation on Romanian sites. The first assembly resulted in establishing the management structure of the Association. | More…

Experimental site of well-known satirical weekly

Academia Catavencu started Facemcatavencu.ro [RO] (’WemakeCatavencu.ro’), an experimental site intended as the making-of of the magazine’s site, Catavencu.ro [RO], which is also to be launched soon. Catavencu.ro has not been redesigned in several years and offers most of its content on a per-pay basis. A source from Academia Catavencu told Comanescu.ro that the magazine’s site only has 200 to 300 subscribers, most of whom are from the Romanian diaspora.

Facemcatavencu.ro will be turned into an Internet club after Catavencu.ro’s relaunch.

Academia Catavencu is a popular Romanian political satirical weekly that sells between 40 and 50,000 copies per day. The publication has recently been taken over by Sorin Ovidiu Vintu, one of the controversial Romanian billionaires who got massively involved in the media market in 2006.

Evenimentul zilei’s staff assaulted by offers (updated)

Evenimentul zilei, one of the top three general Romanian newspapers, lost two of the journalists on its board because of offers made by Adevarul, the daily recently taken over by Dinu Patriciu, one of the controversial Romanian billionaires who have recently started an assault of the Romanian media market. After Laurentiu Ciocazanu and Ovidiu Nahoi last Friday announced they would leave the Evenimentul board for the positions of editor-in-chief and deputy-editor-in-chief at Adevarul, rumours started appearing about offers made by Adevarul management to a dozen of other Evenimentul staff writers. According to some other sources, Evenimentul is preparing some counter-offers.

On Thursday, November 23rd, Evenimentul zilei’s Editor-in-Chief Razvan Ionescu held a meeting with the entire team of the publication where he announced training opportunities for the team and admitted offers were made to journalists. According to other sources, there will be a 7% general salary increase at Evenimentul Zilei. Ionescu also said he would have individual talks with employees during the next days. | More…

Libertatea’s campaign: anti-British folklore, figures about high drugs intake in UK

Libertatea, Wednesday, 22 November: UK is ‘the European capital of drugs’ (sic), figures showing the high use of illegal substances in Britain, a Romanian musician called Jan de la Craiova (Jan from Craiova) that has composed an anti-British ‘manea’. ‘Manea’ (pl.: ‘manele’) is a hard to define phenomenon very popular during the last years, simliar to the ‘turbo-folk’ in Serbia: a mix of Turkish, Gypsy and Romanian music, with a pathetic singer and poor electronic (keyboards & drum machine) orchestration. Words are also pathetic and in general stupid, which in the anti-British song reads:

The Englishmen’s Grudge

Many Romanians with a big soul
Have left the country,
They’re the kings of ideas,
The Englishmen’s grudge.

They look for the straw in our eye
Try to kick us out from their country,
Make up diseases,
Only to get rid of us.

Ref.:
Still
We’re worthy Romanians
At home and abroad.

• The Libertatea story [RO] with the original words.

The tabloids war ending: The Sun silent, Libertatea deals with the AIDS infected Romanian migrants issue

Libertatea published today a new piece [RO] coping with the negative reports about Romanian migrants in The Sun newspaper. The Romanian tabloid refers to a piece printed in its UK opponent on November 16, called ‘Migrants’ AIDS epidemic threat [EN]‘. Some officials from the Romanian health system say the issue is well taken care of. The Romanian daily also unburies a statement several years old, belonging to Bill Clinton, that has congratulated Romania for the way it copes with AIDS.

The story ends with an approval letter of a Romanian veterans association.

The Sun didn’t refer to any trouble caused by Romanian migrants in the UK since November 17, when Libertatea’s campaign ‘Look who’s talking’ started. The today’s piece in Libertatea’s tone of voice is more neutral compared to the first episodes of the campaign, where the British have been called ‘drunkards, pedophiles and hooligans’.