Greece’s financial crisis in 2009 led to all kinds of businesses crashing and burning – newspapers included.
One of those that went bankrupt in 2011 and disappeared from newsstands was Eleftherotypia, which had been one of the country’s most influential dailies.
Out of that paper’s ashes, rose another publication, Efimerida ton Syntakton, or EfSyn. The paper has blazed a trail in the Greek media space.
The journalists run the outlet as a collective and it means their business model, their editorial process and their coverage are significantly different from the rest of the mainstream press.
The journalists all own a share of the paper, many of them pulled together personal funds to launch it four years ago. Editors are voted in and everyone gets paid the same – apart from the director, Nicholas Voulelis, who came out of retirement to invest his time in this project – for free.
“EfSyn, the journalists’ journal – it’s an independent paper, with no owner, no magnate, no party behind it, no government. It is a collective property,” says Nicholas Voulelis, the director of Efimerida ton Syntakton.
In a country still in financial dire straits, where trust in the media is low, EfSyn’s circulation is on the rise.
The Listening Post’s Marcela Pizarro reports from Athens on the newspaper no one thought would last.