Seeking That Revolutionary Feeling
May 22 2000
Before becoming leader of Poland's largest media company, Helena Luczywo was the dissident editor of an underground newspaper that supported the solidarity movement in the 1980s. Now, as members of the media establishment, the former democracy activist and her colleagues at Agora are taking a rather conservative approach to the revolution of the moment - the Internet.
Agora is a towering corporate figure in Poland. One of the largest non-state-owned companies on the Warsaw Stock Exchange, it controls 40 percent of national print advertising through its two weekly magazines and flagship newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza. Agora also owns 10 radio stations and has stakes in television companies.
While Agora is an innovator in many of its businesses, it has moved slowly to embrace the Internet. Gazeta Wyborcza has been online since 1997, but only this winter did Agora begin to consider developing it into a broader consumer site where people could shop and manage their finances. To get started, the company signed Softbank's Polish unit to develop its financial services. The site, still unnamed, is set to launch later this year.
It's about time. "They're way behind," says analyst Jacek Dzierwa of Solomon Smith Barney in London. He says Gazeta Wyborcza's online content is good, but that Agora should have linked with one of the country's leading portals - Onet or Wirtualna Polska - rather than competing directly with them.
Luczywo, who left her post as editor of the newspaper in February to develop the site, doesn't apologize for Agora's timing. "We think this was the right moment to start," she says, citing the early stage of the Internet in Poland. As of the end of 1999, only 2 million of the country's 38 million citizens were regularly using the Web, and many of Poland's Internet users have yet to make an online purchase.
"We want to be ready for the new world," says Luczywo, asserting that Agora has the money and the might to invest aggressively in the Internet. "And we don't think the new will drive out the old."
Creating a new world and driving out the old was exactly what Luczywo and her associates tried to do when they struggled against Wojciech Jaruzelski's communist regime.
The solidarity movement eventually gained the upper hand, and in 1989 the communist regime agreed to let solidarity negotiators start a national newspaper in the run-up to the first partly free elections. After the elections, Luczywo made the paper a must-read for its consumer information and cutting-edge stories.
Luczywo's right-hand-man in growing a fledgling newspaper into a media corporation was Adam Michnik, an influential writer and philosopher who founded the newspaper with her. While she ran the paper's operations, Michnik was its public voice in chronicling and shaping Poland's transformation.
The two former dissidents now preside over the flagship of a media dynamo that's gaining momentum despite its slow start on the Net. Last week Agora reported first-quarter revenues of $41 million and net revenue of $8.5 million, an increase of 58 percent over 1999. That extra cash will come in handy as Agora plays catch-up in Poland's portal race.
Peggy Simpson writes about Central Europe's economic affairs for the Warsaw Business Journal and European Banker.