I left Romania almost four years ago, to follow my heart. I found my new home more than 2,600 kilometers away from Bucharest, in an old mill in the Pyrenees.
Despite the distance, I did not lose touch with my native country. I wrote for almost two years for a quality magazine, which vanished from the Romanian media scene at the beginning of the pandemic. Bad luck, you might say. It’s not that simple.
I hark from a huge, international news agency, Reuters. There, I learned and practised for almost a decade the discipline of writing and multimedia journalism.
After so many avatars of the press in Romania and in the world, especially in the first two decades of this millennium, with ups and downs fueled by the sensational thirst that anesthetizes the fears and confusion of a constantly changing world, I felt the need to return to the independent, quality press, far from the copy-paste industry.
So let’s make a bet on excellence, which I hope to win together with you, our readers.
I am not alone in this endeavor. We have put together a team of experienced journalists who, like me, look beyond the top of the media iceberg. We are not cynical or regimented. What brings us together is, I think, the wish to make a difference and the maturity of our approaches, in all their diversity.
We are not nostalgic or dependent on the past, which we assume with our heads held high, and we come from different directions of the Romanian and international press, with what they had and still have better. I say this without false modesty.
We were enthusiastically joined by a very young voice, who I hope will find an echo in time, through our new media platfom, Santinela.net, and grow with us.
On the lookout, with the Sentinel
The name itself may sound pompous or silly. However, it signals rather a matter of constant vigilance. Like that of the sentinel bee, for defending the hive. We want to scrutinize the ever-moving horizon of guarding truth and honor, which are not just big words. And to explore, as far back as we can imagine and conceive, the past, with its reverberations on the present and the future.
We are not the holders of the absolute truth. Nobody is. We are a team of people who believe in truth and we do try, as much as we can, to bring it forth and serve it, in the age of fake news and post-truth.
We want to look not only in our own yard, but to look up to what surrounds us, to understand where the Zeit Geist is going and where it takes us – the spirit of our time.
Our approach is also an educational one, no matter how daft it might sound to the younger audience.
The name Sentinel was not chosen randomly. Yes, it is true, there was also a publication registered under this name (“Sentinel” at that time), in the 1940s – in the Second World War – in Romania.
But nothing can be further from us than a totalitarian ideology, of the extreme right or left. No one can control a name. If so, our 21st century Sentinel will exorcise the demons of the past.
And this is because we want to join the wider fold, against all odds, of the independent press, to establish a long-lasting relationship with our readers, based on timeless values - respect for truth, professionalism and integrity.
We invite you, therefore, to be our partners in this endeavor, which is not easy at all. We will all rejoice in its success, and no one can be indifferent to a failure.
We do need a free, complete press, like we need air. We all have something to gain from it. The Sentinel is waiting for its readers.
Mission
We also want to share our experience and be the mentors of a new generation of quality press journalists from Romania and beyond.
In this regard, we will launch a series of master classes, face-to-face or by video conferences, each in its own field, for journalism students and young journalists from the national and local press, with a limited number of students.
The best journalists from the master classes will be encouraged to write on our new independent media platform, Santinela.
Integrity, truth and honor are the values which we, the masters of the press “dojo”, uphold.
We want to lay the bricks at the foundation of a quality-press institution, formed by excellence and with enthusiasm, the Santinela media platform, which will go in parallel with the master classes in the “dojo”.
We will try to raise funds from top companies in Romania, in order to finance the master classes and the media platform of our project, together with European funds.
This project is aimed, in the first phase, at Romania, but the master classes will gradually be developed in the future to address young journalists from all over Europe, with a focus on Eastern, ex-communist countries, where democracy, the rule of law and human rights are not an intangible fact but must be strengthened and permanently defended.
