Why Poland sells so few newspapers

Despite having a well educated population, Poland has a very low rate of newspaper readership. One might trot out the reason being that in the past the choice and the allowable choice of subjects was so narrow. But that was a whole generation ago, what steps has the Polish media made to improve its image and readership? Well, actually, not a lot, despite a number of new titles being released.

The effect of the minimal effort can be seen in the quality of writing, and even I, with my liberal attitude to grammar, am shocked by the appalling way that texts are, eh, let's be generous here, 'created'. There is a key that sees a surprising amount of use on the average Polish journalist's keyboard - the hyphen. A paragraph of speech might go something like this:

- It turned out that information had surfaced in Poland that Russia wanted to eliminate him as their agent - Jan Kowalski and to be more precise that they were personally interested in stopping him – added Kotlarz.

When you look at the paragraph as a whole it can make sense, but, assuming that you are a Pole and you know that the hyphen is used as speech marks, it is so easy to assume that it is Jan Kowalski who was being quoted, but no, it also functions as brackets, markers for extra information and so on. The number of reversals you have to make in a single report can be phenomenal, and that is just the start.

Why don't I write a paragraph like a journalist.
I feel no reason why I should bother to connect one sentence to another. The clock has no hands. I might start a new line. There is continuity in my thoughts that I can see as clear as the day is long.
And that is why it is so.

Continuity is a fun thing to play around with, but not when writing to a broad audience who want some light entertainment and to learn what is going on in the world over breakfast or on the way to work. As a consequence, few people want to bother to read such badly composed gibberish, it would be better to wait until one gets to work and then read someone's blog.

Ah, but there are some well-respected newspapers there, in Poland, one might say - but only respectable in terms of the 'writing style thieves' at the top are not as bad as those underneath, working for local papers. The sad thing is that many of these same journalists put in a lot of hard work in their research, it's just that writing is not the same as speaking, it lacks body gestures and vocal inclination, so you cannot write as the words would tumble out while speaking.