Difficult week for Romanian press

This week was a very agitated one for the Romanian press. On one hand, a few newspapers, some that are existing now only online, confronted with a wave of resignation. This came amid movements from one media trust to another, fines, politician claiming a press law is needed and so on.

Evenimentul zilei (Evz) was the one publication everybody’s eyes were on during last couple days. The newspaper – now present only online – along with the economical weekly Capital were brought a while ago by Bobby Paunescu, owner of B1TV, from Ringier Romania. Recently, Paunescu announced he is handing over the management for EvZ to Claudiu Serban.

Taking over, Serban intended to make some readjustments of the team, but, to his surprise, almost half of newspapers’ journalist decided to leave after he was appointed as sole responsible for EvZ. Among the ones that decided not to stay anymore at EvZ there were: a deputy editor in chief, a senior editor, 2 coordinating editors, an event editor, a politic editor and a showbiz editor, along with 8 reporters and special reporters.

Serban was taken by surprise by the journalists exodus and said, for Romanian media, that he wasn’t expecting such a big number of journalist to leave the publication.

On the other hand, Capital – economic weekly that has the same ownership as EvZ – lost its editor in chief on Friday. Iulian Bortos was editor in chief on Capital for six years and, before that, he worked for Mediafax News agency.

Besides that, another interesting move is “the migration” of Adrian Cercelescu from Gandul.info, a newspaper that went exclusively online a while ago, to Jurnalul national.

As Paginademedia writes, Cercelescu, former deputy editor in chief at Gandul, takes over as online editor in chief at Jurnalul national, changing a media trust – Mediafax Group –  with another – Intact. Along with him, Jurnalul increases its team with another 3 journalists: Gabriela Ștefan (investigative chief of department Gandul), Robert Veress (investigations) and Alina Badalan Turcitu (social).