13 June 2012
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The Guardian
Eleftherotypia was Greece's second-biggest newspaper, a centre-left
daily with a proud tradition of independent reporting and opinion.
Founded after the fall of the military dictatorship in 1974, its name
means "freedom of the press". With the exception of a couple of special
editions brought out by its staff, it has not been published since last
December. Its 800 employees – writers, editors, production staff, print
and support workers – have not been paid their salaries since last
August. There have been individual court cases, most of which the employees have
won, and Eleftherotypia's owners were recently denied court protection
from creditors. But there's still no money. This week, more than 120 journalists and production staff have
gathered again in the paper's offices, preparing a third and, very
possibly, final special edition, to be published on the day before the
general election re-run that could be so crucial for Greece's future. It
will run to a full 80 pages of news and comment, like the old days, and
from the support they are getting, on Twitter and elsewhere, they are
confident they will sell at the very least 50,000 copies, at EUR 1.30 a
pop. "We're making one last effort," says Christos Zervas, a senior roving
reporter. "We want to send a message to the public, the market and our
owners that we are still here, that we can still make a very good
newspaper, that plenty of people will still buy it, and that something
should now be done."
Original source