From hungary-online-owner Sun Mar 19 10:06:55 1995 Return-Path: owner-Hungary-Online Received: from localhost (daemon@localhost) (fnord) by nando.yak.net (8.6.5/8.6.5) id KAA00456 for hungary-online-out31415; Sun, 19 Mar 1995 10:06:55 -0800 Received: from localhost (daemon@localhost) (fnord) by nando.yak.net (8.6.5/8.6.5) id KAA00447; Sun, 19 Mar 1995 10:06:43 -0800 Received: from vagvolgy@husc.harvard.edu () via =-=-=-=-=-= for hol@hungary.yak.net (445) Received: from gwarn.versant.com (gwarn.versant.com [192.70.173.14]) (fnord) by nando (8.6.5/8.6.5) with ESMTP id KAA00441 for ; Sun, 19 Mar 1995 10:06:32 -0800 Received: from husc.harvard.edu (scunix5.harvard.edu [140.247.30.45]) by gwarn.versant.com (8.6.9/8.6.9) with ESMTP id JAA22321 for ; Sun, 19 Mar 1995 09:54:59 -0800 Received: from fas by husc.harvard.edu with SMTP; Sun, 19 Mar 1995 12:52:22 -0500 Received: by fas (5.0/16.2) id AA18447; Sun, 19 Mar 1995 12:50:52 -0500 Date: Sun, 19 Mar 1995 12:50:51 -0500 (EST) From: Andras Vagvolgyi Subject: Re: (HOL) narancs on the net To: Steven Carlson Cc: hol@hungary.yak.net In-Reply-To: Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII content-length: 4394 Sender: owner-Hungary-Online@hungary.yak.net Precedence: bulk Reply-To: Hungary-Online@hungary.yak.net Hi HOLers, My old buddy Steve Carlson asked me a few questions, let me answer them briefly: On Sat, 18 Mar 1995, Steven Carlson wrote: > Andras: > You're the founding and present editor of _Magyar Narancs_. This year > you're studying at Harvard under a Neimann grant. Nearby is the MIT Media > Lab, where the New Media are practically being invented. Tibor Beke studies > at MIT. As I recall, Jozsef Hollosi is at Princeton, also not too far away. > > Have you all met physically yet? (I assume so). Did you first come across > Tibor on the hungary-online list? (That would be gratifying). Yes, we've met, the three of us had lunch here in Cambridge in January when we worked out the blueprint of the Narancs on the Net project. I'm really sorry we came across with Tibor phisically first and than virtually, though I agree: it would have been truely gratifying to meet first on the hungary-online list. > How have you been inspired being at Harvard? The Nieman Fellowship is a Harvard grant for mid-career journalists and it offers three things: acces to all Harvard and MIT courses, it's own program, and the company of the other Niemans (total 26, half American - from major news medias like ABC Nightline, CNN, AP, Time magazine to name some -, and half International, from Japan, Hong Kong, China, India, South Africa, Bosnia etc.). The Nieman program brings leading journalists (Bob Woodward, Sy Hersh, Elaine Goodman for example), politcians and media theorists to seak twice a week. This seminars are focused on the American media, but this week we'll have Miklos Haraszti, who is a visiting professor of political science this year at Northwestern University, Chicago to talk about the media war in Hungary. In the fall semester I joined the intermediate filmmaking class of Dusan Makavejev who is a several times exiled Yugoslav enfant terrible of the international cinema and some recent Chinese history and East Asian politics classes. This semester I go on with the filmmaking - actually with an other Nieman, Janet Wilson of the Detroit Free Press we make a documentary on kids, gangs and violance in the Detroit -, and I took some other film related classes (Makavejev's film theory class, Stanley Cavell's opera & film class, Robert Brustein's drama class) which are all fun, and a class on American Buddhism, which is work (with Gyula Gazdag and Istvan Eorsi we are about to make a film on Allen Ginsberg in June for German and Hungarian television, so this class is my part of the research). In a nutshell: Harvard is pretty inspiring. > How much time have you spent exploring the Net? Big time in the fall, I literally spent like 4-6 hours daily on the Net. Lately much less, doing e-mail and if I need some research. One of the biggest bargain with Harvard is the free hook up to Lexis-Nexis what is simply incredible. I take a class with MIT Media Lab, digital-guru Nicholas Negroponte and Mike Hawley - plus a great number of guest speakers from AT&T Lab, Silicon Graphics, White House and MIT's own AI and Media Lab - talk about the newest madnesses. We're there shoulder to shoulder with Tibor what's really useful for me, because in the end he explains me what we heard is all about. > What direction do you intend to take the Narancs when you return to Hungary? Well, the stereotype here with the Narancs is, that this publication is the Village Voice of Budapest. Though I like the comparison my usual correction is, that right, Narancs is the Voice for Hungary, but also the Rolling Stone (with Narancsful monthly music supplement), and The New Republic and The New York Review of Books (with it's liberal and intellectual readership) of Hungary which is a small country and odd combinations are compressed into one single weekly. Anyway, where I see the Narancs a year or two from now is to become the Wired magazine of Hungary as well. I think even in a poorly equiped country like Hungary we don't have the luxury not to think seriously about the chances what the new technologies offers to news media, though of course here in Cambridge surounded with cutting edge technologies I also developed some sceptisism with the ueber-enthusiastic Information Super Highway madness. There is a long way to go even in the States or Japan but no responsible media-folk can ignore the challenges. Ciao: Andras ############# # This message to Hungary-Online@hungary.yak.net # was from Andras Vagvolgyi # # To unsubscribe, # send "unsubscribe" to # An announcement-only subscription (less volume) is available # at # Send mail to for more information, # or to if you need human assistance. #############