New weekly pledges news without spin

  • 2002-02-21
  • Bryan Bradley
VILNIUS - An innovative newspaper has hit the streets of Vilnius, with ambitions to develop into a large but simple daily.

The Academy of the Art and Science of Television, a public institution involved in media production, launched the first issue of the free Lithuanian-language newspaper Metropolis on Feb. 16, Lithuania's Independence Day.

"Metropolis has been compared to the free Metro papers published in many parts of Europe, but we are totally independent of them and I don't think the papers' looks are similar at all," academy Director Tomas Petrokas said.

The first issue had a print run of 50,000 copies, he said.

"We want to inform society about key news and events in an easily accessible way, and above all without any bias. The idea is just to inform the public, not to form public opinion," he said.

Metropolis will be published weekly in Vilnius on Fridays beginning March 1. The paper's management hopes that by fall the newspaper will become daily and have a circulation of 400,000 to 500,000 throughout Lithuania, which has a population of 3.5 million people.

The first issue consisted of 24 color pages, with the top third of each dedicated to advertising. It offers brief summaries of local and international news, miscellaneous "light" reading, extensive schedules of cultural events and a guide to television programs.

Marius Veselis, a news broadcaster at TV3 television, heads the new paper's editorial team.

"Initial reactions have been quite varied," Petrokas noted. "This is a newspaper for people who live intensely, and it has no pretensions of joining the journalistic elite."

Copies of the first Metropolis were distributed Feb. 16 on the streets of Vilnius and available at shopping centers and service stations.