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North Korea, Nazis, BMWs: When these are the topics, they know at the Delfi news portal beforehand that the articles will be read. It’s not as easy for EU topics. Editorial journalist Vytenė Stašaitytė explains how online journalism works in Lithuania.

Vytenė, explain it to me: Lithuania has been a member of the EU for almost ten years but the Lithuanian media don’t have any permanent correspondents in Brussels. Why not?

Stašaitytė: It’s just too expensive – sadly. It’s not worth it because hardly anyone reads international news. If a story about the EU does not directly relate to Lithuanian citizens then it’s not a topic. It’s easier to use the news agencies, too. We also look at what the other media abroad are writing. We have a couple of freelancers working for Delfi, in Germany for example and in London. Public radio had a correspondent in Brussels for many years. But, when he became the press officer for our president there wasn’t one anymore.

A story goes well, you once told me, if it’s about North Korea, Nazis or BMWs. Here at “Delfi” what topics are clicked on and what aren’t are monitored quite precisely. Does that restrict your writing?

Sometimes as a journalist you might find a topic exciting, but you know no one is going to read it. Then you have to decide whether it’s worth dedicating so much time to it or whether to put it on the back burner. Here are Delfi we rely on advertisements. That’s why we sometimes have to forget what we learned at university. Once I reported on the war in Syria. Usually no one reads that. But I simply wrote the heading “Explosion in football stadium” and didn’t mention Syria. That article was one at the very top that day. It’s not entirely correct, but then the people at least read such important news.

When we visited the parliament together, most of the members were reading the news from one of the big online media on their tablets or laptops. Is this at the expense of the newspapers? Is there a “newspaper crisis” in Lithuania?

Definitely. Over the course of the financial crisis, the newspapers got thinner and thinner; some also were printed less often: not five times, but only three times or once a week; the adverts got smaller, too. At the same time the taxes were raised. Those were very hard times. Now, a lot of the content in the newspaper comes from online journalists. They said, “We don’t need so many journalists. The ones who write for the online media can also write for the newspaper and vice versa.” The journalists suffered from that, of course.

How well developed are the online media?

The Internet here is on broadband, so technically it’s very well developed. The number of Internet users has risen in recent years and I think that really everyone that uses the Internet visits our page at least now and then. Not all online media are as free as we. Some have the same Lithuanian owner and, if you follow the content, you ask, “Why didn’t they report on this or that?” But the two biggest news portals, us and 15min.lt, are free. We have foreign owners.


Actually, censorship was mainly a problem during the Soviet era. Is it still in Lithuania today?

The days of that risk are basically long over. In my experience and as I recall – I’ve been in this business since 2003 – that is no longer the big problem. In Lithuania you cannot always say what political direction a newspaper takes. In Germany, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung is described as conservative, the taz as left wing and so forth. Here it’s not like that, maybe because our political culture and our political life are not really as clear-cut: decisions are sometimes not made based on political convictions, but on political economics.

Is the Soviet past still extant in Lithuania?

Yes, and it’s not so much because of the Russian part of our population. Only about five percent are Russian; we have comparatively more Poles in Lithuania. But there’s this Soviet nostalgia. You probably have that in some parts of Germany, too. There are people who reminisce about the good old days and say, “We hoped everything would get better, but actually it was better back then.” I think these people have forgotten what it was like.

You’re familiar with the German media landscape, you speak the language, your boyfriend is German. So, did anything about your “Close-Up” stay in Germany surprise you?

For Lithuanian circumstances, we at Delfi are a big editorial office. But my stays showed me how small we are compared to Deutsche Welle. I was simply surprised by the size of it.

Lithuania, by contrast, is an unknown country for many Germans in the middle of Europe. How did the people react when you said you’re from Lithuania?

The typical reaction was, “Lithuania? Ah, Riga!” or “Tallinn!” Most people don’t know the name of Lithuania’s capital city and have only a very rough idea of the Baltic region.


Should Lithuania do some more advertising to make people in Europe more aware of it?

It’s not easy to have a presence with our political decisions or our foreign policy. I follow our presence in other world media a bit; very often the news is about something crazy that is not at all important – for instance baby racing in Lithuania. That’s even reported in the major media. They don’t report about how we build bridges to Eastern Europe and have lively policies with neighbouring countries. That is odd.

On my first day in Vilnius I was told, “Lithuanians get excited about four things: theatre, basketball, the Eurovision Song Contest and St. Casimir’s Day fair.” Those aren’t exactly the traditional favourites of Germans. How different are we from one another?

I think we are not very different from one another at all. We’re Europeans; we have lots in common, also with regard to our history. I don’t think that we two, you and I, are different; say “the cool Balts and the warm Germans.” You Germans are a bit cool, as well.

Monika Griebeler held the interview.