The most competent Greek newspaper Elefterios Tipos (Free press), will issue its last copy tomorrow. The economic crisis, the shrinkage of the advertising market, the unpleasant situation in the print press, and the irrational business policy of the newspapers’ owners Theodoros and Yanna Angelopoulos, brought the biggest collapse in the Greek media market. Together with the newspaper, the broadcasting of Radio City will also be suspended, because both are using the same publishing house.

In an official announcement in front of the media, the owners committing to paying off all planned by the law compensations to the staff. This news was more or less expected because lately there were talks about Angelopoulos’ attempts to sell the newspaper to a foreign investor. The attempts were not successful and now the owners have decided to fold the publication, which was founded in the 80’s from another family – Voudouris.

Elefterios Tipos is a right wing newspaper, in which most of the best journalists are writing. Their articles are often quoted in some of the biggest media around the world. Last year, the publication won the European award for best design. For the journalism environment, the constant castling in the administration was obvious, as well as the constant and sometimes suicidal experiments with its content, which repelled the classic conservative readers but did not manage to attract readers from the other political spectrum. To those problems we have to add also the global tendency for rejecting the print media and the fact that there are hardly any advertisers who want to invest in newspapers in Greece – they prefer TV and magazines.

Meanwhile, the salaries were left disproportionally high in comparison to the small circulation of Elefterios Tipos, which additionally increased the losses of this otherwise rich Angelopoulos family. Folding this publication is believed to be a big failure, especially for Yanna Angelopoulou, who showed exceptional managerial abilities as a president of the organizational committee at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens.