Gazeta Wyborcza

Lore & Background

Gazeta Wyborcza was established in accordance with the arrangements of the Round Table, as a press organ of the Solidarity Civic Committee in the election campaign before the parliamentary elections in 1989. Initially, the daily was to be called Gazeta Codzienna, and the adjective 'election' was to function only during the election campaign. The first eight-page issue was published on 8 May 1989, in a circulation of 150,000 copies.

The founders were Andrzej Wajda, Aleksander Paszyński and Zbigniew Bujak. Its founding was an outcome of the Polish Round Table Agreement between the communist government of the People's Republic of Poland and political opponents centred on the Solidarity movement. It was initially owned by Agora SA. Later the American company Cox Communications partially bought the daily.

The paper was to serve as the voice of the Solidarity movement during the run-up to the 1989 parliamentary elections. As such, it was the first legal newspaper published outside the government's control since the founding of regime in the late 1940s. It was prepared by 20 journalists, most previously associated with the underground weekly Tygodnik Mazowsze.

Michnik convinced Wałęsa to name him the editor-in-chief. Helena Łuczywo and Ernest Skalski became Michnik's deputies. The first editorial office was located in a former kindergarten in Mokotów. According to the editors, the first edition was small (150,000 copies) and relatively expensive due to the limited supplies of paper made available by the government.

A year and a half later, the daily run had reached 500,000 copies. In September 1990, during the breakup of the Solidarity camp following the collapse of the communist government, Wałęsa revoked the paper's right to use the Solidarity logo on its masthead. Since then, the paper has been an independent newspaper broadly aligned with the centre-left and liberal position.

Reader's Guide

Gazeta Wyborcza covers political, international and general news from a left-liberal perspective. It publishes thematic supplements on economy, law, education, and health, including Duży Format, Co Jest Grane 24, and Wysokie Obcasy. Since its founding, its investigative journalism has played a key role in shaping Polish public opinion, such as its coverage of the Rywin affair, the Skin Hunters scandal in 2002, and the PKN Orlen scandal in 2004.

In recent years, it has emerged as a leading liberal voice on issues like the separation of church and state and civil liberties, including women's rights and LGBT rights, which has sometimes resulted in conflicts with Poland's conservative PiS-led government (which was in power between 2015 and 2023). It had over 290,000 digital subscribers, and 80,000 print sales. In 2020, it was the 10th most read newspaper in Europe.