Type of site News Created by Matija Babić Alexa rank 2,323 (October 2014) | Available in Croatian Website www.index.hr Commercial Yes | |
Index.hr is a Croatian daily tabloid website, launched in November 2002 and based in Zagreb. The news site covers politics, business, sports, show business, and features columns covering everything from gossip to political commentary.
Index.hr was founded by Matija Babić and was originally designed as a news aggregation website, providing news content from Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The website quickly grew in popularity, and over time more original content produced by the growing staff was being added to the site, until it became a popular media outlet in its own right. Index.hr gained public recognition by exposing a series of scandals, the two most notable being the 2003 controversy stirred by a discovered recording of popular singer Marko Perković in which Perković publicly performed a song praising the World War II fascist Ustaše regime, and the 2004 celebrity sex tape scandal involving Severina Vučković, a pop singer.
On account of website's success, the Austrian-based media concern Styria Medien AG (who owned Večernji list, one of the most widely circulated daily newspapers in the country) had hired Babić as editor-in-chief of 24sata, a new daily tabloid which targeted "young, urban and modern" readers. 24 sata was launched in March 2005 and immediately established itself as the third daily newspaper in terms of circulation (behind Jutarnji list and Večernji list). However, it was also criticized for sensationalism and poor quality of writing, and Babić was sacked in July 2005. Babić then returned to Index.hr and continued to run the website, currently holding the title of "author and editor of the project".
Index.hr managed to keep its place among the top-visited websites in Croatia throughout the period, and has since launched a number of additional services, such as Bloger.hr (a blogging website) and Igra.hr (a website for online flash gaming). According to Alexa.com analytics compiled in October 2014, Index.hr ranked 5th most visited site in Croatia, and 19th in Bosnia and Herzegovina.