Weekly +udove noviny helps Slovak culture to survive in Hungary.

(From The Slovak Spectator)

Byline: Laszl" Juhasz Special to the Spectator

Slovak island on the Budapest Broadway HEARING sophisticated Slovak speech filtering out from an office in the very heart of Budapest would surprise any visitor to the Hungarian capital. Yet, one should not be taken aback by this: for over 20 years, the former National Minorities' House in downtown Budapest has been serving as the editorial office of the only major Slovak-language weekly in Hungary, the 1/4udove noviny. The building is situated right in the middle of Nagymez' utca, a busy street often referred to as the Hungarian Broadway, since many of the famous Budapest theatres are nestled in its centuries-old buildings. "Before the establishment of a self-government system for the minorities in 1995, cultural heritage organisations of Slovaks, Croatians, Germans and other ethnic minorities resided here," says our designated guide, Eva Fabianova, pointing her finger to the upper levels of the building. The young journalist has been a staff writer with the 1/4udove noviny for a year and a half. As we sit down in one of the six rooms that comprise the editorial office of the weekly, Fabianova explains how she ended up writing for Slovaks living in Hungary. "We are a small community so it was easy for them to find me," she says with a grin. Brought up in Pilisszant" (or Santov in Slovak), one of the approximately 110 municipalities with ethnic Slovak inhabitants, Fabianova had always wanted to continue her studies at a Slovak university. "At eighteen, facing the question of what to do next, I approached Imrich Fuhl, not anticipating that he would later become my boss as editor in chief at 1/4udove noviny. He told me that ethnic Slovaks [in Hungary] were in urgent need of sociologists and journalists. Sociology had never been my cup of tea, so I decided to study journalism in Bratislava," Fabianova says, recalling her beginnings as a journalist. As for the initial stages of the 1/4udove noviny, the paper was published for the first time in 1957; its predecessor, NaSa sloboda appeared for the last time in October 1956. For 46 years, the paper has continuously operated under the name 1/4udove noviny. Now, five staff writers and four freelancers are writing and editing the twelve-page weekly. "Apart from our devoted freelancers, we have an editor in chief, his deputy, a proof-reader, and us, the two staff writers," Fabianova says, counting the few personnel on her fingers. "In fact, each of us is a reporter, a photographer, a writer, and an editor at the same time. We are all-in-one journalists," she adds. We walk around the premises, peeking into some of the offices. It is Friday, meaning there is almost nothing to do at the weekly. No deadline, no hurry. So we have time to talk and enjoy some coffee. The 100,000-strong Slovak minority in Hungary, unlike its Hungarian counterpart living in Slovakia, does not consist of a homogeneous community or uniform language area. Rather, Hungary's ethnic Slovaks live in isolated communities and in relatively small units that speak the language, which, in most cases, reduces the chance of survival. The minority-language media is instrumental in helping the culture of ethnic Slovaks survive. Public radio and television offer broadcasts in each of the country's minority languages. The Slovak minority gets a daily thirty-minute radio programme, and public service television devotes 25 minutes of its airtime to a Slovak-language broadcast. "There are only a few journalists in our community; this is why two of my colleagues have also been working for the television and radio programmes," Fabianova explains. In Hungary the state subsidizes newspaper and book publishing in the Slovak language. Running no ads or other commercial ...