Erik Best is an American living in Prague who publishes a
news bulletin called Fleet Sheet. It runs daily in English and is written about
business and political activities in Czech Republic. Best came to Prague in
1991, and the newsletter has been running since 1992. He started out as a
sports Journalist, but later on decided that it wasn’t what he wanted to do.
Graduated from Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in 1985, Best
has been interested in the subjects of politics, journalism, and foreign
affairs for a number of years. He got his masters in Russian language at
Middlebury College in 1985 and studied in Moscow in 1983 and 1984 and decided
on bringing an English language newsletter to Prague by coming here to visit.
He did much research on places in Europe and visited a few places before he
realized Prague would be the best place to start his business. Best originally
targeted his paper towards the foreigners living in Prague, and didn’t have
very high hopes for his business making it for longer than a few years.
However, the Czech people quickly became his main customer base and the company
has been thriving for more than 20 years.
Best speaks English, as well as Russian,
Czech and French. His experience studying Central and Eastern Europe for over a
decade interested him in the culture and learning the languages of those
cultures. His Fleet Sheet is a one page executive summary of the Czech Press
that is made available to subscribers in Czech and English. The newsletter has
a readership of about 6,500 people. He also publishes the Final Word, which is
a short daily commentary on major business and political issues affecting the
Czech Republic. The Final Word is published Monday to Thursday every week. This
commentary was founded in 2001 and was made available in Czech in 2010. On
Fridays, when the Final Word is not published, they put out the Friday Edition,
which is a weekly analysis of what’s going on in the Czech Republic. It is
included in a subscription for the Fleet Sheet, which can either be bought as a
subscription or in single issues.
Best
is also known as somewhat of a controversial American, seeing as he has a lot
of opinion on journalism and politics. He has a lot to say about the role of
Facebook and social media in today’s society concerning news and delivery of
news. He says that Facebook and Twitter do not have a huge chance of becoming a
main source of news because there is no solid delivery device. By this he means
that all the big news company have the hardware to deliver news, such as
magazines, news articles on websites, newspapers, etc. He makes a very good
point and I learned a lot from his guest lecture that day. It definitely made
me see the importance of holding onto original news sources and not always
listening to what you hear on Facebook.
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