Press as an Economic Phenomenon and its Peculiarity in the Transitional Period

Emzar Jgerenaia

Not long ago a friend of mine (Irma, who has been working on these problems for a long time) came to me and spoke on her dissertation work. The conversation was about economic aspects of media and information.

It was a very interesting view since information was considered as property and peculiarity of press business management had a sign characteristic of transitional countries. To tell the truth, at first it was difficult for me to fully apprehend this project. I thought that it would not be a very sharp one. But I was very mistaken…
Not long ago a rather successful media publication devoted a special page to the results of the Georgian Railway Department’s work. In particular, there was a headline – “The Speed is Gradually Increasing” – the rail-track service has carried out large-scale repair works and (Oh, miracle!) ”the tracks at Tbilisi junction – Tbilisi switching were replaced and… the speed has increased from 40 km/h to 100 km/h”. The same happened at Grakali-Uplistsikhe span, here the speed has increased to 100 km/h as well. I suddenly imagined how an engineer started his locomotive with its 40 cars in Didube and raced to Isani at a speed of 100 km/h, and somewhere at the central railway station he was stopped by a patrol for speeding. Oh, what have we come to, is it a miracle or reality?! In Georgia trains’ speed has been a subject of international criticism for years – it ranged from 5-7 km/h to 34-75 km/h, and the country suffered serious losses for this reason. The situation in this sphere has been deteriorating for years. For instance, in Chaladidi – 5 km/h, Vale – 8 km/h, at the pass 3-4 km/h, and at last we caught up with Europe where they have reached the bound of 100 km/h. If they had tried harder, we would have passed ahead of it. Experts have no idea if repairs could be of any help in this respect. Henceforth be careful, do not be surprised if the train rushes you at a speed of 100 km/h. Paper will bear everything, one can just go crazy with it! This is really a subject for a dissertation, I want to advise my friend to study this information.
It is good, the commodity turnover will increase, a new section will appear in “Patrol” television project – “patrol on the railway”, and it will be full of interesting stories – a train going at a speed of 100 km/h failed to dodge a tank-car train going at a speed of 120 km/h and damaged its wing or collided with it (and escaped at a high speed); patrol arrived to the occurrence site and the rest will be established by the investigation, and further like in a usual text.
Information is a miracle! There is so much one can hear about! And it has a purely economic “niche” – after that happy carriers are already counting how much time they will save. After that publication we rechecked what is going on the rail-tracks, and you should not have any headache over it any more. Somebody will say that this is “PR”, what a misfortune is it? It, dear sirs, is a shocking, nicely packed quinary truth. Is it new? No, it is a long forgotten and revived anew one – it looks like what used to be written in notorious newspapers – “a collective farmer Sonia assumed a new obligation – she will milk three cows at a time by hand”, or another one – “Shakro will mow with two scythes in order to fulfill the assumed socialist obligations”, or “Zalikia from Chiatura will give more black stone on Monday morning”, and “Dzuku has picked in a day a ton of tea from a plantation that withered a long time ago”, etc. Now everything is clear since it is old in a new form and under a new name, it is not worth worrying and it will not be of use to economic activities.
Our transport workers got angry and shouted with annoyance: “Aristophan, I was joking, man. Why do I have to fondle with everybody?”
It is good that you were joking, my “PR workers”, but information has a serious economic load (I have no idea about it. Irma, my clever author of dissertation, has told me so), so be careful so that the engineer should not read it, should not rush his locomotive at a speed of 100 km/h at Uplistsikhe and should not find himself in the Mtkvari river. But it is nice that engineers drive their train so slowly and spend so much time on the trip from Poti to Biukiasiviki that then they have time for sleep only, and they do not read newspapers and do not know what “PR” is.
Or take a horoscope in a newspaper. One acquaintance of mine read the following: “Today financial success is expecting you at work, your salary will be raised.” He believed it and went to his boss and pressed the point. And? And he was fired at all. Another example from a newspaper horoscope – another acquaintance read that he would be lucky in gaming today, went to a casino and lost everything.
No, there is a peculiarity – in the west one should read press since information contained in it can help to you to make millions or warn as to what should be done in order not to lose them. You should not read newspapers in our country for two reasons: firstly in order not to lose everything, or secondly – not to be detained by patrol for speeding in a locomotive, or not to find yourself together with a locomotive in cold Mtkvari on these cold May days, and not to develop a sore throat and avoid falling in Machavariani’s hands for excising of a part frozen by anesthesia. Do you want to have problems? If you don’t, beware of PR in a country with transitional economy.