Yes, that is the aim. Don’t forget that even though readers have been getting Romano voďi for seven years, we remain one of the newest Roma periodicals. When we started, we wanted to fill in a gap in the market. Naturally, we perceive it very subjectively. RV doesn’t have to be for everyone - you will never please everyone, but we wanted to show that Roma could do a magazine that was stylistically very diverse in terms of genres, with many different journalistic styles, high-quality photographs, demanding graphic design, good paper, with photographs on the front page that always relate to the news material inside – simply, a magazine with a more modern flavor, if I can call it that. It’s hard to evaluate your own work, but we have succeeded during these seven years in acquiring many media partnerships. We won the silver Efiie Prize for our work with the McErickson advertising agency in the social advertising category. As far as I know we are the only national minority publication – not just the only Romani publication, but the only one issued by a national minority – whose articles are all collected by Newton Media, a subscription service through which our work gets to many journalists. After seven years of work, however, we are naturally very much considering what to do next, whether we are fulfilling our purpose, whether people read us or whether we are just writing for ourselves. We started with the magazine, and a year later we added a web service, which over time became the news and feature service www.romea.cz.

We have asked a few people whose professional opinions mean a lot to us to evaluate our work. We listened to them closely – it wasn’t always flattering, but that was what we wanted. The magazine will be undergoing extensive changes now on the basis of those comments – but primarily because we have felt for about a year that change was needed. We will be getting rid of some sections, we’re going to get out of news, because we can’t compete with the web, and we will focus on material that goes more beneath the surface, do more analysis, put things in context. Understandably there is a risk that we will become less comprehensible to part of our readership, but that is the great drawback of the national minority press. Each minority has a maximum of four publications, the Roma have three. We cannot afford a more specific focus on this or that target group of readers. Look around at the majority press – how many magazines exist just for women? From little girls, to those in puberty, 20-year-olds, 30-year-olds, 40-year-olds, some focused on homemaking, some on the more emancipated women, etc. We can’t afford anything like that. Kereka has a certain advantage because its readers are children, but Romano hangos, your readers, or ours…. We have to be satisfied with wanting the magazine to fulfill its function of informing, of educating, of breaking down myths and stereotypes related to Roma, with running those topics in a Romani magazine that won’t occur to anyone in the mainstream media in relation to Roma. We do that – we ask whether Roma vote or not and why, what they think of the 20 years since 1989, what role love plays in their lives, naturally in addition to the many other topics that are evidently intended for the Roma press.

Are there authors, Roma or non-Roma, and topics you wouldn’t put in the newspaper? What kinds of contributions from which authors do you reject?

There certainly are – we reject (of course very politely) articles that are so poorly written that they can’t be edited, we would just have to rewrite them. I’m thinking of those general musings about what it is like to be Roma, how hard it is to live here, “ach”, “ouvej”, etc. We write commentaries about specific phenomena, situations or events. We do our best, within the realm of possibility, to make the monthly as up-to-date as possible. We also wouldn’t put someone in RV who doesn’t have a good reputation, at least not consciously. I’ll give you an example: In our third or fourth year we had significant financial difficulties, any and every sponsorship gift would have helped us. We had the opportunity to acquire a rather large amount of money. We desperately needed it, but we rejected the offer and risked the possibility that we might go out of business completely. The offer was from Provident Financial, a firm that loans money at enormous interest rates. Even though it operates within the bounds of the law, we know many Roma have gotten caught in its web.

We won’t include topics that are unethical, tasteless, or propagandistic, but there are not very many of those. We do discuss how to approach the topics, understandably, and our opinions are sometimes diametrically opposed, so then we have to find a compromise. One such topic, for example, is the census. How can we write about the census and not have it serve as propaganda? “Go own up to your Romani nationality?” Some believe the article should have that message – not put quite so bluntly, better-written, but the idea that Romani nationality should be a matter of pride. I believe this too, I always acknowledge my Romani nationality without any problem - but I would never admonish someone else to, because I consider that a purely personal decision that is no one else’s business. So yes, we have these discussions, but that’s healthy and we always respect whatever conclusion we eventually agree on.

The children’s offshoot of RV, Romano voďori, has had a handsome start. When will you evaluate that project? Approximately how many younger people have you succeeded or are you succeeding in engaging to publish in the newspaper? Do you want to eventually have them work for RV?

We have wanted to have Romano voďori (Little Roma Soul) for children – mainly created by children themselves - for a long time and we did our best, over a long period, to get it started. We finally have it, but only for a limited time of two more years as part of a project on work with children from 10 different schools. After that, we’ll see. Even so, for the time being we are very enthusiastic about Romano voďori and it seems that many of the child editors are in constant contact and would like to contribute more and more. We are sincerely pleased about that. The communication is indirect, for the most part, the personal contacts are rare, and we very much appreciate the children's goodwill.

We evaluate all the operations related to the magazine as we go along, by the end of the school year 78 pupils in 10 schools had read the children’s edition. After we published the first issue, five children got in contact and are now regular contributors. I estimate that a quarter of them are very active, contributing to every issue, regularly contributing on the web, communicating with us, and the level of their writing and their ability to work with the topics is constantly improving.

As far as questions of possible cooperation with RV are concerned, we are definitely open to that. Thanks to Romano voďori we have discovered two smart young Romani women who would be able to transfer to a magazine for a different age group after some time. For the time being, given their age, we are doing our best to negotiate closer cooperation for them with youth magazines such as Red Way. However, that is still in negotiation, we’ll have to see whether it succeeds.

What is your guess or opinion, will this form of publication also reach people in the extended families of Olah Roma? Do you work with anyone from that community? What do you think is going to happen with the Olah branch of the Roma?

That’s a complicated question and generalization is not a good way to respond to it. I am not an expert, but I do know many Olah Roma from Brno and other cities, both personally and from work. Probably not even they would be able to give you a proper answer. Some hypotheses: I know a few Olah Roma who are more familiar with the Roma press and broadcasts than any “Rumungro”. I know a Romani girl, by now she’s a woman, who was so focused that she even abandoned her family ties for a while and moved to Prague to study. After that she worked at the Education Ministry. I know Olah Roma whose family traditions have completely collapsed as a result of drug use, just like many other Romani families. It’s hard to predict, but I believe that in the Olah community it is much more complicated to arrange for educational encounters - it goes more slowly due to a lack of family motivation. On the other hand, almost all of the Olah Roma speak Romanes, so the Romani press is not working completely in vain.

Why are there no Romanes-language contributions on the Romea news server?

When we started the server in 2003 we had the entire web page in Romanes as well, but we couldn’t maintain it and that section was updated very rarely. Romea.cz per se has no financial support. Sure, sometimes we succeed in getting money for this or that section of it, but always just as an addition to some other project. For example, right now a year-long project is ending that focuses on providing legal aid to victims of discrimination and hate-based violence. As part of the project we succeeded in publicizing various cases on the server, and that’s how we financed the articles. It was the same last year as part of the Anti-Racism Campaign project. Another part of the server where the video reportage is housed (www.romea.tv) has been supported by a CZK 140 000 grant from the Czech Culture Ministry. It’s in the videos that we speak Romanes. Some brief news reporting is even recorded in Olah Romanes.

We have tried to get financing purely for news reporting in Romanes, but we haven’t succeeded yet. However, a project of ours was supported as part of the program “Support for the Implementation of the European Charter on Regional and Minority Languages 2010”, and in the second half of the year those visiting our website will see original literary and feature works in both Czech and Romanes by contemporary Romani authors there, as well as a course in Romanes.

Sometimes it is said that the print media will be gradually replaced by the internet. What do you know about the younger generation of Roma and their liking for the internet? Is it the same as with non-Romani youth?

I don’t have any studies or research available on this, so my remarks are based purely on my own observations and estimates from what I have followed on our website and also the communications and presentations of people on the Facebook social networking site. Young Romani boys and girls are closely involved with the internet, they use it quite extensively and naturally, it’s a way for them to make contact, which I sometimes find quite chilling. You know, I still prefer to experience life “live” rather than through the internet. I like to see my friends, to meet up with them, and I do not intend to spend my evenings on the computer with people whose faces I can’t see – even though today you can see them as well! So yes, it’s the same, young Roma also prefer to receive information through the internet. I see they are reading classic newspapers less and less often.

Hundreds of people read the Romea news server. Do you have any ideas for how to improve that or increase your numbers in the future?

No, not really. The Romea.cz server is visited, according to statistics compiled by www.toplist.cz, by an average of 2 000 people Monday through Friday. Whenever we have a cause that gets taken up by mainstream news servers, the number of visitors multiplies. We are doing our best to increase the number of visitors, for example, through a profile of Romea on Facebook where we regularly post links to new articles. We have been at 2 000 for a year, for the time being we have not succeeded in exceeding that number. Of course, that is a high number on average compared to many other websites of respected nonprofits, like People in Need, etc. – unless for example, there are floods in the news or some other event related to their work. It would certainly be good to have more original material, then the numbers would probably start to rise, but again, that is a question of money.

Romea is one of a very few news servers that has not yet introduced regulation of the online discussions of its articles, and most of the contributions there come from Czech racists, there are not many Roma participating. Often the grammar of those comments is pretty poor as well. Are you considering changing that, improving it, or are you going to leave it as is?

The discussions on the server are moderated at least once every two days. We have a pretty well-developed set of rules for the discussion. The quality of those discussions varies in waves, sometimes it’s better, but of course if a provocateur shows up, an otherwise well-behaved discussion degenerates into mutual incriminations. However, you can often find interesting, even critical opinions being exchanged between Roma in the community. That is very beneficial and represents a certain kind of feedback for our activities or those of other nonprofits. We are considering starting a discussion through the social plug-ins on Facebook - that way, discussants would have to register on Facebook prior to participating in discussions of articles on Romea.cz, but people can create anonymous profiles on Facebook too, and that would defeat the purpose.

What do you think of the recent Czech Government report on minority periodicals?

To begin with I am glad that finally someone has evaluated the work of the many people who work at the national minority periodicals and that there has been a comparison of the quality of these periodicals across the board. Naturally, we can discuss the degree to which the report, which was written by a single author, is objective. Romano voďi was very well reviewed - I dare say it got the best review of all the Roma publications. I would consider it logical for the results of this evaluation to be reflected, at the very least as a sort of guideline, in the amounts of the subsidies granted, that the periodicals with the best reviews would get more money, but that’s not how it works. Despite this positive evaluation for Romano voďi, we are going to change many things about the content and the graphic design next year, if we continue to publish at all, and we have started some of those changes already.

What can be seen from the report, if you read it thoroughly, is that the Roma periodicals, especially Romano hangos and Romano voďi, are different from most of the national minority press in that they include a lot of political topics. Our need to express ourselves about politics really sticks out, maybe because the image of the Roma minority in Czech society is so much worse than it is for other minorities. It also has to with the fact that unknown or very problematic politicians in the regions have often done their best to get publicity by exploiting Roma topics, aware that they can get nationwide attention in a very short time if they do that.

What are you dissatisfied with in Romano vod’i, what will you do differently?

I’m not going to get specific because I would give away our new “recipe” and you might not be so interested in the changes when we make them! Over the summer we are testing some slight graphic design changes, bigger line spacing and a font change to make the texts more legible, fewer colors, more black-and-white work, trying to make it feel more spacious. So we’ll see! We are considering combining some of the sections, like the profiles of athletes, Romani boys and girls who represent the Czech Republic at national level, with another section on interesting Roman personalities in other fields. By introducing that “sports” section we are the only Roma periodical to have sought out, mapped and written about Romani athletes. We wanted to get into uncharted waters, to confront the stereotype that Roma only excel at music and dance.

After seven years, however, it is quite exhausting to keep discovering new sports talent every month with a limited editorial staff. We want to take a break and just write about these accomplished athletes in the same column that covers accomplished Romani doctors or engineers or tram drivers, for example. In the future we are considering replacing some of the news genres with more analytical works that put things in context. Now see, I’ve told you almost everything, Pavel….

My opinion is that the Romani family or extended family structure and the fixation on that structure really does mean, for a large part of the Roma, that it is almost impossible for them not only to create political organizations, but any other kind of broader, functional, working group, because different criteria are in operation there, a different way of cooperating, communicating, taking responsibility, a different perception of the concept of “solidarity”. How have you overcome that – or are you overcoming it - at Romea or Romano vodi?

The economic situation and developments in general have already caused a greater inclination toward individualism in the Roma community. The family circle is narrowing to include only immediate members. However, you are right about the interconnectedness and the complication of writing about some matters, reporting on them, because some people will not discuss them with you – but we are much more open and critical than the Roma in Sweden are, for example! Colleagues from the Roma radio there explained to me that they cannot ask about politics, Romani activists, or topics related to that at all, that it’s just not done. “What do you broadcast about?” I asked them. Apparently most of the coverage is about culture and traditions.

At Romano voďi, when we are creating the magazine, doing any kind of other work, seeking colleagues for work in the areas of media and education, reporting on neo-Nazi activities, whatever, we follow one basic rule. Family members do not work here. We are not a family business. We believe that means we can be more critical among ourselves and in public. However, there are still various taboos in place. We recently discussed the fact that we and the rest of the Roma media report very little, for example, about the practices of Romani loan sharks, the fact that some dishonest people from among the Roma make money off of the poverty of their fellow Roma.

Do the young Roma around RV and Romea maintain their ties to their extended families and environments, do they speak Romanes at least sometimes, do they uphold any traditions?

It depends who comes from which extended family, which traditions have been maintained in which families. No Romani person who works at Romea has ever hidden his or her origin, they have always been proud of it, and I believe they have also done their best to promote it inside the community. That goes for our non-Romani colleagues, many of whom have graduated in Roma Studies and know how to speak or at least understand Romanes and have known many Roma for years, been friends with them, helped them.

How are they perceived back in their home environments, in the places they left to come to Prague? I ask because the argument is sometimes made that the traditional Roma environment allegedly does not view education and careers for individuals as a priority.

Yes, that is said and it is also written in the expert materials produced by the government, and it really angers me! In our family we have always spoken about the fact that we are Roma, we were raised to be proud of our origin, and we were also raised to embrace education, and responsibility, and the idea that we are not supposed to lie, or cheat, or blame all of our failures on discrimination. Whenever I make this protest to all of those professors of the “culture of poverty” or would-be journalists who have been following the Roma for five years and consider themselves specialists, we often argue, because they tell me that I am not a “typical” Romani woman. That is so disturbing to me every time I hear it! I am a Romani woman, I have always been Roma, and I would never dare attempt to define a “typical” Romani person, or a “typical” gay person, or a “typical” Czech person, but lo and behold, those guys can do it no problem! Their image includes Romani people who dance, play guitar, have 10 children, don’t know what a condom is and don’t know what Facebook is – but college students? Jesus! According to this theory you immediately lose your identity once you get a college diploma!

How are our Romani colleagues perceived, how are we perceived in our home environments? That depends on how those people behaved before coming to work for us! Were they Roma? If so, no problem! Look at Monika Bagárová, Jan Bendík, Richard Samko. Roma adore them, even on television they have never denied they are Roma, and before they became famous they never avoided the Roma community. I am always with the Roma in Brno, with our entire family. To this day we all have a good time together as usual. Sure, over time I have grown in a different direction, but everyone knows I am Roma and they don’t doubt it just because I have a diploma from Charles University and have moderated however many radio and television programs.

Completely nontraditionally, RV and Romea have opened up the topics of women’s rights and the rights of the gay minority in the Roma environment. Can you describe what the reaction has been? I am mainly interested in what the various groups of Roma think, not just the free-thinking, urban, non-Romani intellectuals.

I am glad you noticed. Yes, we are doing our best to do that, I am generally very interested in the topic of equal opportunity. I have many friends who are foreigners, members of national minorities who have lived here for several generations, gays and lesbians, and members of various religions. I said when we started Romano voďi that we wanted to be a modern magazine and break down stereotypes, including among the Roma. I know many guys who have come to Prague from other towns precisely because they are gay and did not want to be the cause of “embarrassing” situations for their families. I know Romani girls, very bright ones, who studied diligently and make decent money with their brains, experience and hard work. They naturally approach life a bit differently than someone who is the mother of five children – but that doesn’t mean they are no longer Roma!

Today we encounter negative reactions to this reporting rarely, very rarely. In the beginning it wasn’t like that. Even very tolerant, educated, dignified Romani gentlemen were shocked by one of our covers featuring Anděla Halušková, a finalist in the Miss Czech Republic competition. A beautiful, warm-hearted girl! She was very graceful, and she competed in a prestigious national competition, not “just” a Roma one (please don’t take that the wrong way)! It included a bathing suit competition. The reaction we got when we showed her on the cover in her bathing suit - “That, in a Roma magazine?” They said it was inappropriate, that it was against tradition! It was a very tasteful photograph. Anděla is petite, with a certain grace, and not an unnecessarily effusive girl. After all, at any Miss Roma competition you can see girls dancing in lascivious positions, more exposed than not. Four years later, when we immortalized a graceful samba dancer wearing a very daring costume on the cover, everyone thought it was beautiful. That’s the progress we’ve noticed!

Back to the topics you mentioned – I always feel there is a gap, a need for genuine, up-to-the-minute reporting from the places where Romani girls and boys are being sold. Some do it to buy brand-name clothing, while others do it to have something to eat and a place to sleep after leaving an orphanage. That is the harsh reality, and we want to write about it!

You are probably the longest-working female Romani journalist in the Roma media in the Czech Republic. What flaws do you see in Romano hangos? You know the newspaper, how would you do it in Brno, given its limitations, which you are probably also aware of?

Oh that’s hard to say! I know a lot about what kind of conditions and limitations RH works under. Neither you nor we have 10 full-time editors and four photographers we can send into the field and to press conferences. I know how hard it is to work today at a national minority magazine, when one year you don’t know whether you will be coming out the next. When five months into the year you still don’t know whether the Culture Ministry is going to give you money for that year, but you have to take the risk and work those four months without drawing salary and hope it will pay off! And so forth.

I might give you one piece of advice… I would work with bigger and stricter distinctions between the genres in the newspaper. I would have more original material, mainly photographs. I would not include some of the commentaries you have run, because they seem very sloppy to me, they blame everything on “those guys hurt us because we are Roma”. Of course I very much like some of the analyses and commentaries, such as the ones you yourself have written, or those by Karel Holomek!

What does Jarmila Balážová think about Veselý‘s former magazine Gendalos, Polák’s Amaro gendalos, Kereka, Romano VIP? What do you think these publications should have done differently?

I am not a media critic, so I am not going to be specific. I have had some personal disputes with some of the people who ran those periodicals and I don’t want it to seem as if I am settling scores. Journalism among the Roma is going its own way, it needs time to mature. We need more people to study journalism, to practice it for many years in the mainstream media where there is more competition and demand for balance, that much-discussed idea of objectivity, and some kind of journalistic rules. In general, it bothers me when someone could give someone a chance and doesn’t because that person might excel them, outgrow them, compete with them. I am sorry to say it, but that was the situation for at least some of those products you mentioned. Maybe this is surprising to you, but I would like to pay tribute to those persisted and didn’t let themselves be tempted away, those who might have been, by more secure work elsewhere. It is not socially prestigious (and financially not at all prestigious) to work at a Roma monthly. Many people learned as they went along, and they learned a lot! I like Romano VIP, but I would force those young people to write more about their own environments, to be a little less “tabloid”. I haven’t seen Kereka in a long time, but in general I would recommend more original writing and stories and a greater focus on the educational function of the magazine. The graphic design is good. No one has to take this advice seriously though.

How do you think the Roma media are going to evolve? In my opinion the magazines are going to merge, perhaps fold, even though I would rather see the opposite and I am doing my best to make it happen.

I see it the same way – merger and then collapse. Those of us who have been “at the wheel” a long time are running out of air, we want to do something else, maybe start our own families. The problem is I am not sure the young people into whom we have invested hope and time and sometimes done our best to teach them something will stay with the Roma media or editors, given the conditions in which they have to work. The better ones certainly will not, they are being tempted by television, programs where they can get famous, better opportunities, prestige, whether societal or intellectual, it depends on the individual. What if the Roma media end up being led by the worst among us? I don’t think the future is very rosy.

How do you manage to work in two media outlets at the same time?

It is very hard. I work at Czech Radio 6, the former broadcasters of Radio Free Europe in Czech, and I run an average of three programs a week there. It takes an endless amount of effort to create, produce, moderate, edit and broadcast that all. In addition to that I have Romea and also many other activities. I answer questions from college students, from journalists and others. For a long time I also did television, but then I couldn’t go on, I was on the brink of collapse – and I am used to working a lot! You know, my dream still is to train a successor for myself at Romano voďi, but year after year I have to do the editing myself. I would love to return to television and have more free time! Well, we’ll see!

What do you think of the non-Roma newspapers and magazines, which ones do you prefer? Which ones do you read most, who are the “ace” journalists you like to read, and why?

Newspapers: Hospodářské noviny, MF Dnes, Lidové noviny. Magazienes: Respekt, Reflex and Týden. I also read the monthly Psychologie. I also listen to the radio a lot and follow television. Authors: I like the commentators from abroad, because I have a lot to learn from them, I like travel and nature documentaries, and of television moderators I take my hat off to Jan Kraus. That’s why I agreed to be interviewed by him on “Please Relax” - and after many years of professional work, I actually had enormous stage fright for about two days before I went on his show. It was horrible!

Will you ever move back to Brno, or have you settled in Prague for good?

During my first two years at university I was convinced that I would return to Brno and not live in the capital. Today I love Prague and I cannot imagine living elsewhere! However, I do often go home to Brno, my parents are there, my siblings and their children are there, the whole family is there, no one can replace them!

What are your personal and professional goals? Have your previous goals been fulfilled, or no?

I don’t know, now I don’t have any goals, just very basic wishes. Those concern the health and happiness of those closest to me, because then one has no worries and can work. I am used to earning things, making money for them, trying to work through to a goal. I am a Capricorn, we just tenaciously keep moving up that cliff! (Laughs) It is extremely important to me to do what I like, and I have done many interesting programs on radio and television for years. I haven’t just done the moderating - I’ve edited the scripts and sometimes even directed small documentaries, it is interesting work! So I believe many of my dreams have already been fulfilled and I hope some more will be too, the personal and professional ones. I don’t set myself professional goals any more, I am waiting to see what will happen, which surprises me, and that goes for the personal goals as well.

This interview will come out after the elections – is it rude to ask for whom you voted and why? We – my family – have given our votes to ČSSD for the most part for the last 20 years.

I usually vote for liberal parties like the Freedom Union used to be, or the Green Party. My entire family votes for ČSSD. I always vote, because I consider myself an active, responsible citizen and I can’t stand people who lament the situation in the pub over a beer, especially when you learn that person never voted.

Which Czech party in your opinion has the program that is best able to address the matters of concern to most Roma?

That is hard to say now, but it would be the Green Party and ČSSD, if you are asking generally. Of course, I also know Roma who regularly vote ODS.

Do you have any annoying questions you would like to ask me in return about Romano hangos?

Not annoying ones – rather the wish that you succeed in collecting those last bits of strength so you can persist and find new co-workers who will help you not only with writing and taking photographs, but also by giving you new motivation and energy!

The original article was published in the Czech language in Romano hangos No. 10-11 2010 on www.srnm.cz