Jumhuriyat, coming Sunday to newsstands up and down the sycamore-lined streets of Tehran, illustrates both the core resilience and the discreet new trajectory of the progressive impulse in Iran, where politics is not what it used to be.
After all this repression, it would be a sign of hope to people, said Baghi, from a corner of a crowded table in a room swarming with young reporters. We are still alive. We are still trying.
We want to show that such a thing is still possible here.
. . .
If I want to be honest and talk about the future, it's somewhat confusing to me as well, said Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a jocular cleric who, as one of Khatami's vice presidents, stands to be out of a job next year. But the frown that clouded his amiable features lasted only a moment.
In the social context, he added, the future is very bright.
As it happens, the social context is where Jumhuriyat aims to thrive. Baghi trained as a sociologist, and his newspaper is founded on the widely held belief that most Iranians stopped caring about politics years ago, shortly after Khatami's 2001 reelection failed to produce either economic revival or changes in the way Iran is ruled. By the time the conservatives pushed aside the reformers, people had already stopped paying attention to a process that had little effect on their lives.
People are sick of political debate, said Ali Reza Kermani, who has weathered the closing of three newspapers and quit his day job to join Jumhuriyat. They want their voices to be heard, not just political debate expressed in jargon they don't understand.
Kermani, for example, will cover civic organizations, citizens' groups formed to address problems such as galloping drug abuse. Pages will be devoted to making sense of culture, entertainment and other topics for a population that remains disaffected but no longer sees hope in organized politics.
There is a possibility this newspaper might be able to express the voice of the majority of the citizens who have never had a voice, said the paper's political editor, Parvin Emami, a former political prisoner who shows not a single hair from under her black head scarf.
I've been told our job is to support certain rights in general without getting involved with political struggle inside the state, she continued. I believe this is a step forward for Iranian journalism.
The strategy plots a backdoor route to making daily newspapers relevant in Iran to an extent not felt here since Khatami was swept into office in 1997 with almost 70 percent of the vote.
And there's more. Good piece.
