Editor-in-chief Ivica Đikić Circulation 8,000 First issue December 1999 | Frequency Weekly Publisher Serb National Council | |
Categories Politics, current affairs | ||
Novosti (Serbian Cyrillic: Новости, lit. The News) is a Croatian weekly magazine based in Zagreb. It is published by the Serb National Council (SNV), the main state-funded body concerned with promoting human rights and dealing with issues related to the ethnic identity and the participation of Serbs of Croatia in the Croatian society at large. The organization was established in July 1997 in Zagreb, based on the provisions granting the right to self-government for Serbs in Croatia as set in the Erdut Agreement.
Contents
The magazine, billed as an "independent Serb weekly" (samostalni srpski tjednik), describes its editorial policy as being primarily concerned with covering general news and publishing "critical writing about all the relevant political, social and cultural developments in Croatia". It also deals with issues related to the Serb community in Croatia and the development of civil society.
The Novosti weekly was originally launched by SNV in December 1999 in broadsheet format as a weekly publication primarily concerned with minority politics related to Serbs of Croatia. Since its first issue the magazine adopted a policy of linguistic pluralism and featured articles written in both Croatian and Serbian languages, and offered a mix of sections printed in Latin and Cyrillic scripts. However, its circulation was limited to subscribers and was not widely available in newsstands for the first ten years of its existence.
In late 2009 the magazine underwent an extensive makeover in an effort to transform it into a weekly magazine which would also appeal to the mainstream public, with more space dedicated to commentary pieces and coverage of nationally significant political and cultural events, as well as investigative journalism. To that extent, the magazine hired a number of prominent columnists and intellectuals as commentators, including Viktor Ivančić (formerly of Feral Tribune), Boris Dežulović, Vladimir Arsenijević, Tomislav Jakić and Igor Mandić, and was for the first time made available for purchase at newsstands.
As of December 2009 its circulation is 8,000. Its editor-in-chief is Ivica Đikić, formerly of Novi list daily. Over the time magazine published interviews with Noam Chomsky, Etgar Keret, Zygmunt Bauman, Henry Giroux, Srećko Horvat, Milorad Pupovac, Chris Hedges, Jacques Rancière, Vivek Chibber, Filip David, Georges Wolinski, Mladen Ivanić, Vesna Teršelič, Andrej Nikolaidis, and Mirjana Karanović.
Criticism
Political satire and social commentary are integral part of Novosti editorial policy. This at some points caused strong criticism among some Croatian nationalists with dogmatic views on historical events such as Croatian War of Independence, who saw ridicule of militarism, Croatian military and national symbols as unacceptable excess of limits of freedom of speech. Some of them were calling for cancellation of public support for the newspaper, criminal prosecution or censorship. Some mainstream politicians in Croatia, including the president Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović, warned the editors that they shall take care what they are writing about implicitly calling them to use self-censorship. President stated that she consider journal satire to be inappropriate and similar to cartoons of Muhammad in foreign press such as Charlie Hebdo.