Croatian Serbs’ Newspaper Thrives in a Tough Environment

Novosti started 20 years ago solely as a weekly newspaper for Croatia's Serb ethnic minority, but as its profile and impact have grown, so have the pressures that its staff have had to face.

Its readership, with a print circulation of 6,500 a month plus more readers online, is now much wider than the small Croatian Serb community, but it is loathed by right-wing nationalists, partly because it is published by the Serbian National Council, an organisation that represents the interests of the country's Serbs.

"There is an awareness that Novosti is different from other media because the publisher is the Serbian National Council and it is perceived as a newspaper of the Serbian national minority," its editor-in-chief Nikola Bajto told BIRN in an interview.

"No other media has had protests in front of the newsroom. No other media has been burned - copies of the paper have been burned multiple times by extreme right-wingers - and these are some of the circumstances in which we are used to working," Bajto said.

The newspaper now covers all important issues inside and outside the country, in the same way as other Croatian media.

"We address political reality critically, we are bringing analysis, investigative articles, comments, opinions from some of our positions with increased sensitivity to certain social trends," Bajto said.

The exhibition 'Novosti 20/20', which marked the upcoming 20th anniversary of the paper. Photo: Jovica Drobnjak.

Novosti has also been raising the alarm about the rise of intolerance against ethnic minorities, hate speech and historical revisionism in Croatian society.

"We were maybe the first to use the phrase that society is being 'fascistised' - a term that's being...