The zero issue of Cultural News has been released

Brno - The first issue of a new weekly magazine called Cultural Newspaper has been published in the Czech Republic. The publisher is not a private company, but an entity called Cultural Newspaper - publishing and media cooperative. Representatives of the cooperative, founded in Brno, publicist and musician Jiří Plocek, and typographer Miroslav Švejda, informed ČTK today. When the magazine will begin to be published regularly depends, among other things, on whether the cooperative can gather enough members for sustainable economic publication in the long term, stated Švejda.
    The new title should, according to the website www.kulturni-noviny.cz, focus not only on culture but also on politics and social issues, and to do so "independently from power and commercial trends." The goal of the project is to create a nationwide network of cooperative members and subscribers who are interested in creating a foundation for publishing such a culturally-political weekly magazine in paper format, stated Plocek.
    The first issue was published as a promotional free edition, the next issues should already be available based on subscriptions or membership in the cooperative. According to Švejda, the membership contribution that would allow active influence on the activities of the cooperative could be around 5000 crowns, while passive support of the project in the form of subscription could approximately amount to 1300 crowns per year. "For now, the cooperative is in development. To publish without losses, hundreds of subscribers must be obtained," stated Švejda.
    The reason why the publishers chose the cooperative form is because, according to Švejda, neither the state budget nor commercial companies can guarantee long-term support for a project like this. Therefore, a cooperative system is being established, which should be self-financing in the future. This way, for example, a magazine has been operating in Germany for 15 years with 8000 members.
    Among the first members of the cooperative, besides Plocek and Švejda, are painter Petr Kovář, publisher Jan Šabata, philosopher Erazim Kohák, music publisher Jaromír Kratochvíl, publicist Ivan Hoffman, political scientist Jaroslav Šabata, and editor and publisher Václav Burian.