Forum for Debate

With political tensions rising everywhere and polite debate a thing of the past, not least in Poland, the business news group Bonnier Business Polska (BBP) decided it was time to do something about it. What they came up with was dyskusja.biz, a premium blog platform that aims to combat the divisive atmosphere by providing a forum for reasonable discussion.

“We kept observing, with the immigration crisis and the outcome of last year’s elections in Poland, that the language of hate is starting to dominate public discussion. That’s why we created an independent place where experts can discuss using arguments not based on prejudices,” says Przemek Barankiewicz, CDO for Bonnier Business Polska.

The platform hosts more than 50 bloggers writing about business and politics, a mix of well-known and upcoming economists, entrepreneurs, analysts, politicians, journalists and bloggers, carefully chosen beforehand by business daily Puls Biznesu’s Grzegorz Nawacki, who runs the project along with a team originally from Bankier.pl, BBP’s online portal business. “Some are famous, some we found on the Internet and some asked to join,” says Barankiewicz. “We wanted to build a critical mass of at least 40 before we started, now we’re getting two to three new bloggers a day who want to be part of it.”

The platform is a stand-alone, albeit with support from Bankier.pl and Puls Biznesu, which is allowed to reuse the material in print. As the platform grows, the plan is to acquire more existing bloggers currently on independent platforms and then monetize dyskusja.biz, sharing revenues with the writers.

The newly launched platform has had 55,000 unique visitors and 110,000 page views already in the first week, and Barankiewicz has high hopes for it. “We’re helping provide a place for reasonable, fact-based conversation, which is important for a free society,” he says. “At the same time, we think it has good business potential, both for us and for our bloggers.”