Kulttuurivihkot

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Magazines : Kulttuurivihkot magazine
Interview : Johan Alèn / Editor in chief

When was your magazine first published?
1973.

Who's idea or concept was it?
Kulttuurityöntekijän Liitto (Association for Cultural Workers in Finland) erupted in 1972, willing to provide Finland with a marxist leninist vision of culture and, thus, society. They wanted a magazine to spread their views, then created the concept for Kulttuurivihkot. There were composers, actors and actresses and other people who developed these ideas.

Would you say that your magazine now is different from the first edition?
Yes, it is very different. Kulttuurityöntekijäin Liitto gave up in 1991. Since then Kulttuurivihkot has had nothing to do marxism leninism. Kulttuurivihkot is an independent left-wing magazine/journal.

The first edition was very rough and there were mostly prints of speeches that had been given in political meetings.

How would you present your magazine to our readers who don't know it?
Kulttuurivihkot is the most important left-wing cultural journal in Finland.
For a long time it was the only one. The journal comes in 6 issues every year.

What are the main topics or areas that your magazine covers?
Arts, cultural politics and ideologies. We focus on the views of the political left worldwide.

What is the periodicity of your magazine?
6 issues every year.

Could you present your "editorial line"?
Independent left-wing. We take no orders from anyone.

Who are your readers? Do you aim to touch or focus on a certain part of the population?
The average reader is an intellectual who shares the basic views of the left: solidarity between people and peoples and the ambition to make the world a better place.
Kulttuurivihkot should be read by everyone.

Do you have any competitors? if so, who are they?
Our competitors include e.g. Helsingin Sanomat (the biggest newspaper in Finland), Suomen Kuvalehti (the most renowned weekly magazine in Finland) and Seura (one of the most popular weeklies in Finland).

Is your magazine distributed all over Finland?
Yes.

Do you know if it is available abroad?
We only have subscribers abroad.

If our readers who live abroad would like to subscribe, how could they proceed?
Contact us by email ( tilaus@valas.com ) or by mail (Kulttuurivihkot,
Lönnrotinkatu 25 A, 00180 Helsinki, Finland). Subscriptions to Europe cost EUR 48 a year.

How is the situation with the Finnish press (newspapers, magazines) nowadays?
It is very bad. We don't even have certain types of press (e.g. intellectual weeklies, liberal daily newspapers) and there is no market for those types of press. The types of press we have have been packed to a small number of publishing corporations. Ideologies are largely omitted. There are voices shouting but they do not gather any audience.

Do you think that this situation will continue or are there many chances that it will change in the future?
We have to change it. The people must act.

Would you say that the "traditional magazines" suffer or benefit from the internet?
They benefit.

Do you have a web site?
http://valas.com

What kind of information do you publish on-line?
Extracts from the print edition and links to interesting material and comments to things that swim in the time.

Have you ever considered the possibility to propose an identical version of your magazine in an electronic format?
Yes. We could have the magazine on-line as an Adobe PDF file but we find it awkward and ecologically bad: readers would have to print the file to be able to read it well.

And to conclude this interview, what are the projects for the magazine in the near future?
We will travel to Brussels and find out why the European Union simply does not work. One of my own hypotheses is that it has to do with the fact of non-free moving of people opposed to free movements of cash and products. EU is a capitalist utopia.

Interview by Vincent Lefrançois - 2003