Members of "Respekt" editorial staff give notice

The majority of members of the editorial staff at the Czech weekly "Respekt" have handed in their notice in protest of proposed changes at the weekly. The step was taken on Thursday. According to one source the daily has lost some 80 - 90 percent of its writers. Milos Cermak, strategic director at the paper, was brought in to introduce changes to try and turn around the weekly's flagging fortunes: for four years now the daily has operated at a loss. Mr Cermak told the Internet server idnes.cz he didn't understand the rationale behind the staff's decision, saying he had given guarantees that coming changes would not affect "continuity" of authorship, nor change the target readership.

Respekt was one of the first weeklies to emerge following the Velvet Revolution: it has roots in the samizdat - "illegal" writing published clandestinely in Communist Czechoslovakia prior to November 1989.

Author: Jan Velinger