“This book examines the relationship between the provincial press and local publicity in Greece. The text, which is based on primary research […], includes the majority of the provincial newspapers in circulation throughout the country today. The research was submitted in December 1990. Since then, some articles based on the initial text have been published. In the intervening five years, however, important realignments have taken place in the Greek press. In fact, some studies have been published which, even though they are not specifically concerned with the provincial press, confirm fully many of our views. […]
The nature of this research is mainly synchronic. The primary data extend as far as 1990. Of course, synchronic sociological analysis requires historical, comparative and diachronic references, which was the case here as well.
It should however be noted that, if the investigation of the media in general, and the Greek press in particular, is in its early stages, the organised and comprehensive study of the provincial press in Greece is literally non-existent. The lack of any relevant literature, data, statistical calculations, etc. is obvious to anyone who decides to take up the subject systematically. Most of the existing bibliographical and other data about the press in the Greek provinces is both outdated and historiographic in nature. […] But apart from the generally delayed and as yet imperfect research into the printed communication system in Greece, the non-existence of sociological., communicational and other scientific approaches to the provincial press is likewise due, largely but not exclusively, to the geographical overconcentration of information, a factor in the Greek political system of government. On the contrary, in other countries, the provincial press not only plays a significant role in the system as a whole, but has also been the object of systematic research. […]
It is clear that, regarding its main objectives, our research started out with a negative, but simultaneously positive, fact: the non-existence of other such studies in Greece. This functioned negatively as regards the lack of references that could channel the direction of the research into more or less “certain” areas that could be checked or confirmed by other related approaches. The field was entirely unexplored, so that every choice was the result of intense thought and, sometimes, an anxious decision. But this fact also functioned in a positive way, precisely because the lack of a precedent offers satisfactory scope for formulating creative primary hypotheses and offers the researcher the charm of being first.
The text is structured into eight chapters and accompanied by three appendixes. […]. (Introduction, p. 11-12, 13).
“It should be noted from the outset that in our research, and with regard to Greece, the term “provincial press” includes provincial newspapers alone, and not the provincial periodical press. In addition, the provincial newspapers in question do not include those that circulated in Thessaloniki, since its mode of operation essentially reproduces the centralized model of the Athenian press… the decisive criterion for excluding the press of Thessaloniki from the entry on the Greek provincial press was the centralized nature of this city in relation to the broader area of Macedonia. Structurally, the press of Thessaloniki operates as the central press. […]” (Notes – References, p.16).
