Jun 25, 2024
The sudden death of a historic newspaper of the Greek Left, of daily Avgi, was announced on Tuesday. The newspaper politically affiliated with SYRIZA and its predecessor will operate only as Sunday newspaper.
The decision was announced to Avgi employees by the Board of Directors of the company that publishes the newspaper and the Executive Office of SYRIZA.
The suspension of the daily publication is immediate and there is not even a “last edition.”
The Sunday edition will continue to be published, as will the online website avgi.gr.
The management stated that there will be no layoffs for the time being.
The closure comes a few months after the suspension of Left.gr, and the intra-company changes at Sto Kokkino 91.4 FM in Thessaloniki.
In the next period, the leaders of the party will reportedly implement a consolidation model both at Avgi and at To Kokkino 105.5 FM, following the standards of what has been implemented in SYRIZA lately.
A meeting of the newspaper workers, who want a meeting with the party leadership, is expected later, in the evening.
Leader of SYRIZA Stefanos Kasselakis had expressed its intention to close the newspaper and other media affiliated with the left-wing party just a couple of months after he was elected its president claiming financial reasons.
Employees at the newspapers speculated that on second thought he was planning to do this after the European elections and possibly after the next parliamentary elections in 2027.
Yesterday, Monday, Kasselakis not only verbally attacked former leader Alexis Tsipras, he also made accusations that the party was circulating ‘money under the hand.”
He claimed that he received “chaos” and that he is going to clean the party and its finances.
Avgi was first published in August 1952 as the news organ of the United Democratic Left, initially as a weekly newspaper and then as a daily newspaper.
Legendary freedom-fighter and anti-fascist Manolis Glezos was its editor for several years.
During the seven-year period (1967–1974) the Greek military junta shut down the newspaper, but it continued publications after the reinstatement of democracy.
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