Public relations

The „interactive” initiatives of A Hét and Uj Idők (1889‒1914)

Abstract

“It’s been ten years since I started the business of founding a weekly newspaper for an audience that doesn’t exist yet, with writers who will yet exist”, József Kiss wrote on A Hét’s tenth anniversary. But who did this readership consist of, or even, perhaps even more, a “reading community” that A Hét “cultivated” around itself? And what can be said about the readers of Uj Idők, another important literary weekly of the period, edited by Ferenc Herczeg? Are there similarities between the audiences of the two papers?
The staff used various means to reach and retain readers. One-sided or rather “one-way” initiatives were the various subscriber gifts or the publication of holiday and jubilee issues, which assumed more passive participation on the part of the audience, but ensured reader insidership and “belonging to the circle of the paper” (rich with editorial “secrets”, unusual writings and pictures). The simplest way of keeping in touch, which assumed active reader participation, was to create and secure the editor’s messages column, where the journalists responded to letters written under a pseudonym. In addition, readers’ interest was maintained and strengthened with several other initiatives: different questions for the readers and the announcement of competitions.
Reviewing the first two (and a half) decades of A Hét and Uj Idők, the study looks for the answer to whether there was overlap and similarity in the implementation of their initiatives an