There’s a paradox in the Czech media. The newly-formed republic constantly ranks well in press freedom indexes. It’s considered more free than France and the UK by both Reporters without Borders and Freedom House. On the other hand, almost everyone we met there told us that journalism standards were such that consumers had very little ways of getting quality information, be it on- or offline.

The 7 national dailies are said to go more tabloidish by the day, as a result of a downward spiral that dumbed down the quality of newspapers. Most of them established an online presence, but the media landscape didn’t see any landslide change as a result of the web revolution.

Aktuálně: Too good to be true

Aktualne.cz was created by journalists who left traditional media outlets in 2005. It sounds a lot like Rue89 or Mediapart in France: a handful of bright journalists who convinced some of their colleagues to leave the print industry and try an online-only venture.

The site now employs 40 journalist and 20 staff, produces the most cutting-edge investigative content in the Czech Republic and brings in a profit. Amazing, ain’t it?

Apart from one thing. A journalist costs about 40,000€ a year in Prague, all the more if you consider that Centrum paid a lot of cash to get hold of the best beat reporters in the city. Multiply that by 40 and that leaves you with 1,6m€ to find, say 2m including other costs. How do your find such a sum, using only advertising, on a market 8 times as small as the UK?

In all likelyhood, Aktualne is an innovative journalistic experiment by its parent company, Centrum.cz (which belongs to the Warburg Pincus fund). But from a business perspective, quality news appears to be just a door-opener for the portal it sits on.

It’s all about personalities

To explain this lack sustainable quality journalism, local media watchers are quick to resort to culturalist arguments. We met with Martin Plichta, the local correspondent for Le Monde, who explained that the Czech had herd-like mentality they inherited fro the Austro-Hungarian period. The Czech, he continued, were more interested in their plasma TV than in a critical press. Consumerism, in short, was responsible for the ills of the free press (see the video, in French, below).

Needless to say, most of our Czech interviewees strongly disagreed. According to them, the Czech Republic suffers from its small size. Unlike in Poland, no quality daily can survive – not enough news-junkies to buy it.

Most of all, it depends on personalities. The heads of the Czech media may be young and open to web projects, you still need project managers to implement them. Adam Javurek is one of them, and he gave quality weekly Respekt a headstart in web matters (read what he did over there).

But in a country where major Western software manufacturers open office by the day, it’s hard to find a cheap developer for a news website.

The inexistant blogosphere

Transitions Online’s Jeremy Druker explained that very few Czech media critics watched journalists and publishers. Online media scholar Jakub Macek added that Media Studies having only started in the early 90’s, no academic could effectively tackle the issue of journalistic standards. Adam Javurek also highlighted that the shortage of journalists was so acute that a blogger with moderate talent could get a job in a media outlet in just a few months.

In such conditions, a blogger is quickly gobbled up by the established media sytem. There’s a long way before someone as extraneous to the system as Guido Fawkes or Etienne Chouard can exert any influence on insiders.

At least that’s what I saw there. Do you know the Czech Republic? What’s your opinion on Czech media?