English-Language Newspaper Folds

The first English-language daily newspaper in Eastern Europe has folded after only six weeks, with the publisher conceding that the paper had failed to find enough readers.

The Bohemia Daily Standard, introduced in November with high hopes of appealing to English-speaking business executives, diplomats and travelers, ended publication on Dec. 21.

“We thought we had a magic formula for capturing all the diplomats and businessmen in town,” said the publisher, Erik Best. “We got their attention but not their readership. They knew about it but were not reading it.”

The circulation was indeed very small, even by the standards of the Englishspeaking community in Prague, which is estimated at about 20,000. At the end, the paper was selling about 1,000 copies a week. “We wanted to be in the 2,000 to 2,500 range after a month,” Best said, “and we were doing about half that.”