Serbske Nowiny has to make up new words as it goes along in its news reports in Sorbian, a language that is spoken in the Neisse valley in Germany's Lusatia region, near the Polish and Czech borders.
Whenever officials in Berlin devise another long bureaucratic word, the Sorbian journalists not only have to explain it to readers, but devise a suitable Sorbian form as well. Sorbian is related to the Slavic languages of eastern Europe, not to German.
Serbske Nowiny (Sorbian news) is aimed at the 60,000-strong Sorbian community, most of whom can also speak fluent German and who are Germany's main long-standing ethnic minority, outnumbering the 50,000 Danish speakers in Germany's far north.
With each copy read by three people, the evening paper reaches an estimated readership of 5,000. It reaches news stands at 4 p.m. but most sales are by home delivery. Surveys show most of its readers also take a German daily.
The newspaper appears Monday to Friday, varying in size from four to six pages. The weekend issue, on Fridays, is usually the biggest.
The newspaper employs half a dozen journalists as well as freelancers. It traces its tradition back to 1842, when Sorbian ministers of religion and reformers brought out a political weekly in Sorbian that was re-named Serbske Nowiny in 1854.
In the early 1920s, the paper became a current-affairs daily which proclaimed itself independent of parties. The Nazis banned it in 1937, but a paper resumed publication in 1947 under the communists and reverted to the old name Serbske Nowiny in 1990.
Today's challenge for the editors is to make Germany's sole Sorbian daily more attractive to younger readers and less "official". The paper belongs to the Sorbian-language publishing house Ludowe Nakladnistwo Domowina and relies on funding from the Foundation for the Sorbian Nation, which in turn receives a subsidy of 15.5 million euros from the German federal government and two state governments.
Those states, Saxony and Brandenburg, are where Sorbs mainly live. The foundation says it passes nearly 1.5 million euros annually to Domowina to publish Serbske Nowiny and a weekly, Nowy Casnik, in another dialect, Lower Sorbian.
The company's main office is in Bautzen, known in Sorbian as Budysin, with a branch unit located in Cottbus (Chosebuz).
Advertising and the selling price only bring in a small part of Serbske Nowiny's income.
Its editor, Benedikt Dyrlich, says his policy is to report on all aspects of Sorbian life including the conduct of the foundation. Those reports are not always favourable, and Dyrlich admits this puts the paper in a position of conflict with its paymaster.
"We aim to be pluralist and open," said Dyrlich, who was previously a state legislator for the Social Democrat Party.
The paper aims to report on more than traditions: it keeps readers up to date, in Sorbian, with general news such as racing driver Michael Schumacher's Formula 1 career. Once a month, the best of the news of Sorbian life appears in a special German edition.
Encouraging young people to write in Sorbian is another aim: a youth supplement appears once a month with articles by about 15 young people. But Dyrlich says the Sorbian region is losing its talented youth, just like most of rural eastern Germany.
Most leave to attend university elsewhere in Germany, and there are few jobs for graduates locally, so they rarely come back.
Internet: www.serbske-nowiny.de
