Anniversaries are marvellous excuses for lazy journalism. Instead of the difficult business of reporting real news, editors can simply ask some reliable old buffers to dust off their notebooks, polish their anecdotes, and relive their glory days.
The 25th anniversary of the collapse of communism in Europe has prompted much such writing. In past years I have produced a fair amount of it myself. I was lucky enough to spend the late 1980s studying in Poland, covering Yugoslavia, reporting from Berlin, and as the only Western newspaperman living in communist Prague. My memories include courage and fairy-tale changes of fortune, as …read more
Source: European Voice
