PRINT MEDIA IN ROMANIAN LANGUAGE IN THE AUTONOMOUS PROVINCE OF VOIVODINA – THE PRESENT AND THE PAST
PRESA SCRISĂ ÎN LIMBA ROMÂNĂ
DIN PROVINCIA VOIVODINA – PREZENT ŞI TRECUT
Valentin MIK
Școala Doctorală de Științe Politice și ale Comunicării
Universitatea „Babeș-Bolyai”, Cluj-Napoca mikvalentin@yahoo.com
Abstract
The first forms of communication in the mass media in the mother tongue of the Romanians in the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina (R. Serbia) occurred at the end of the 19th century. These forms continued to develop during the interwar period and reached their peak with the establishment of The Press and Publishing House “Libertatea” in Pančevo. With the development of modern technologies at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, new possibilities arose, since the working conditions in the field of journalism improved. The significance of written press for the Romanians in Vojvodina is multifold. By fulfilling its basic function, the informative one, depending on the socio-political circumstances of the time, the written press had different functions. Their social function may be the subject of separate extensive analyses. Nevertheless, any of the newspapers that appeared over time, from “Convorbiri pedagogice”, “Nădejdea” to present-day “Libertatea”, was for a long time, for the Romanian reader, the only source of communication with his or her peers in more distant places. In the last decades, it was also the only way of communication of the enormous Romanian Diaspora with the medium from where they originated. Using its human resources, throughout history, the written press in Vojvodina made enormous contributions to the development of the Romanian literature, bringing forth the names of important writers, whose works have left a permanent mark on the Romanian literature in general. The goal of this paper is to present a time line of the Romanian press in Vojvodina (R. Serbia), dealing primarily with its historical aspect, which is very important for our understanding of the other aspects of evolution of the Romanian community in Vojvodina (culture, education, the struggle for the preservation of national identity etc.), which are directly or indirectly correlated with the written press.