Anniversary - 1000 ZF Issues

“Back in 1998, when we launched Ziarul Financiar, we thought it was Romania’s future, rather than its present. It was actually a business journal in a country where business was kind of slow and where economic information circulated less rapidly than it does today. We knew from the very beginning we were not necessarily building a newspaper, but an institution and this was much more risky a bet. Particularly because of the fact that, when one wants to bring future to the present quicker than in the nature of things, one finds oneself faced with all the problems therefrom arising… All this considered, 100% of our success was possible to achieve due to our readers, who, exigently and loyally helped us build Ziarul Financiar and make it what it is today. Four years on, we may say we have attained what we set out to get: the product has consolidated and now we can already pick the fruits that took some time to become ripe. Looking back, I think our stubbornness to keep the newspaper on its original line and to maintain quality and professionalism at all times was a good thing. We have a similar experience, though: Mediafax, which, at the moment of its 1991 start, was looked upon with scepticism and suspicion – how can one believe it is possible to compete with the State’s news agency, with hundreds of correspondents? Still, Mediafax now has the authority and respectability of an institution hard to challenge, as it is one of the best voices in the Romanian media. Of course, we will not stop here, as we have found even more important targets to pursue, concerning both Publimedia and Ziarul Financiar” – Mihnea Vasiliu, general manager of Publimedia

“I must confess I started reading Ziarul Financiar in the second week after I joined the editorial staff. I was coming from PRO TV’s news team, where the daily reading consisted mainly in whatever news agencies, such as Mediafax provided. As this enabled me to know what the papers were going to write the next day, I did not have much use for them. ZF however, changed this habit of mine, for the simple reason that many of its articles were not published elsewhere.
At first I thought this was bizarre, I even tried to change things. My colleagues, however, were wiser than me and took not only the patience to explain but also the time to wait for me to realise the sensational in a business journal translates into figures, instead of emotions. And that the audience expects to see what new deals the competitors have closed or how the shares bought last week are doing. Which things are somewhat out of the average audience’s reach, to which I was used to talk to.
The most shocking thing for me, actually, was meeting the Ziarul Financiar’s audience. For a Romanian journalist in the late ’90s it was almost a job requirement to note that the economy is doing bad, that people have no money and the whole country is actually coming apart. Whilst at ZF I met a reader who had neither the time nor the inclination to whine. A reader looking for an opportunity amidst economic crisis, who sees a way to profit when all the competitors are logging losses, a reader who knew tomorrow was going to be better only if they prepared for it today, without expecting to get any help.
There are not too many such people around, and the newspaper found it hard to cope in the beginning, because it had to struggle to build not only a name but also a market. Its audience today is, if taking figures into account, much larger than at the beginning. The advertising people have realised there are certain products worth promoting in publications tailored precisely to their target. All things considered, this newspaper’s path was and still is tightly connected to the evolution of the prevailing mentalities among the Romanian elites, from the fatalism of the ’90s to the hope, although still small today, that things are headed for the better.
Does this sound too complicated? Let us say then that our audience is suffering from something contagious. And I’m not talking about the power to make money, but the power to make plans. I admit, this is a disease I seem to have come down with ever since joining the editorial staff, for which I have to equally thank my colleagues and our readers” – Lucian Mindruta, editorial director of Ziarul Financiar