Smiltene Man Creates Website Reviving the 1990s and the “Smiltenīte” Newspaper
Gunārs Liedags of Smiltene, who published the local newspaper “Smiltenīte” in the 1990s, has launched the website www.smiltenite.lv about the town in the 1990s and around the turn of the millennium. He dedicated it to the memory of local historian Juris Zušmanis.
The name “Smiltenīte” has reappeared online in Smiltene, a town in northern Latvia. In the 1990s it was the name of the local newspaper, and now a new website, www.smiltenite.lv, carries it. Its creator is Gunārs Liedags, a Smiltene resident who once published a paper of the same name. The regional newspaper “Ziemeļlatvija” reported on the project.
A memory portal, not a revived newspaper
Liedags says “Smiltenīte” is not being brought back as a digital newspaper. The portal covers only the 1990s and the turn of the century in Smiltene. Its landing page reads “We in the 1990s”. It has four pages with reviews of town events, some humorous material and a lot of music. Most images come from old black-and-white newspaper pages and have been restored and colorized.
He gives three reasons for creating it: nostalgia, gratitude to Juris Zušmanis, and an anniversary. Zušmanis wrote the book “Smiltene. Laiki un likteņi” (“Smiltene. Times and Fates”), and Liedags worked with him for four years on its publication in 2004. Zušmanis has since died, and the portal is dedicated to his memory. This summer, on 24 August, it was also 30 years since the first issue of “Smiltenīte”.
Technology and audience
Liedags learned to build the portal in three spring months. His newspaper-making experience helped, as did artificial intelligence. The “PageMaker” program he used back then has been replaced by “WordPress”.
An experimental edition, “Smiltene at the Turn of the Century”, launched on 1 July to test whether the portal could handle the technical load. The 24 August edition followed without wide publicity. Visitors now number more than a thousand: 88% from Latvia, 12% from the US, Ireland, the United Kingdom and Germany, and one visitor from India.
No new editions are planned, but the portal may be supplemented with other events of the 1990s or the names of active residents. Liedags invites viewers to send suggestions by e-mail and hopes the generation active between 2005 and 2025 will write its own story of the town.
