WHAT SLOVENES WANT TO ACHIEVE BY PURCHASING SARAJEVO'S OSLOBODJENJE: GANTAR'S SANITARY COMMANDOS OR CADEZ DEFENDS SARAJEVO

by Marko Crnković

(This article is carried from the Ljubljana-based daily Finance)

When Djuro in No Man’s Land, a Bosnian movie by Danis Tanovic, saw UNPROFOR soldiers hurrying to ‘help,’ he exclaimed with relief: ‘Look, the Smurfs!’ The next roguish remark is a soldier’s remark, who in a moment of cease-fire is leafing through a newspaper concerned by ‘shit in Rwanda’!

This, of course, has nothing to do with the issue at hand. But I assume that the fine Bosnians with their sense of humor reacted in a similar way to the decision by Matjaz Gantar, director of Kmecka Druzba, majority stockholder of Oslobodjenje, to appoint former RTV Slovenia director Janez Cadez to be acting director.

In light of last week’s media event in Slovenia, I can easily imagine a Bosnian reading Oslobodjenje and commenting: ‘These Slovenes have gone completely mad. They appointed a former secret agent to be director of STA!’- but, used to the worst in life, I forgot to remember that they sent them a man with the weakest managerial references and, so to speak, a refugee, who after humiliation at RTV Slovenia had to hide (or needed to be hidden) somewhere.

The story of Oslobodjenje is a story of media transition from socialism to capitalism, in this specific case post-war transition. What was once the largest and leading daily in Bosnia-Herzegovina, something similar to Delo in Slovenia – namely the central daily as it is called in Slovenia today – has fallen to a four figure circulation and a seven figure minus (in German marks).

Classical story. The newspaper decorated by Comrade Tito far back in 1963 with a medal of brotherhood and unity with a golden wreath was proclaimed by the English almost 30 years later ‘newspaper of the year in the world.’ Both, of course, are deserved. Oslobodjenje in the old times was a typically paradoxical combination of controlled, but nevertheless noble journalism, as existed in the former Yugoslavia. Just as it was known how far the media could go in the political sense, it was known equally damn well what and how they could do and what they could not, in the sense of pure know-how, journalistic skills and general ethics. Following the outbreak of war in Bosnia, Oslobodjenje became a concrete and symbolic target, while the newspaper itself, human and content wise, persevered and defied, for as long as it could – and endured.

The fate of Oslobodjenje is similar in a way to the fate of many publications in the former communist Europe. Dissident newspapers, some with unbelievably high circulations, or – even more unbelievably – with state subsidies, functioned almost perfectly in ideologically and economically impossible conditions. But when so-called freedom came, they imploded: suddenly there were no resources for publishing, suddenly they were no longer interesting, and of course, they could not live off old fame and credit for political changes. During the war Oslobodjenje gave perhaps the most that a news organization can give – which, together with recognition and awards given by international journalistic and humanitarian organizations, is useless backing for the high deficit of 1.7 million marks.

The Serbs who shelled the high-rise buildings in Nedjarici were basically working for the Kmecka Druzba. If they had not practically totally destroyed Oslobodjenje physically, there would have been no Matjaz Gantar who could or would want to buy it. This is a fact that the economy must acknowledge if it wants to function normally: the Serbs and Croats in the Bosnian war were actually working for potential Slovenian investors because they, by destroying private and social property – even manpower – were reducing the market and accounting value of the whole country.

Matjaz Gantar’s move to buy Oslobodjenje is mad in itself. What can someone expect from having in his portfolio an honorable and once popular newspaper, which has slid down to a miserable eight thousand copies of circulation and equally poor business results? It seems the decisive argument was that Oslobodjenje, despite the actual state it is in, is a wide and complex business system, which has a lot of staff and know-how and a more or less developed infrastructure. In that sense, it is better to continue from a weak position, than to start from nothing.

Of course, what Slovenian investor would think of founding and launching his own daily in the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina when he does not dare do so even in Slovenia? But that is not everything. The view that it is better to continue from collapse is actually a rational decision from an economic viewpoint, but in a cultural sense it is a sign of faith, not to say obsession with transition, continuity. Where did this idea come from that an institution, which had blossomed in another, different period, and which has obviously withered, could be put back on its feet? Gantar has now shown that he does not have a clue about the media. In this field, namely, there is no job more difficult or more futile than restoring to previous state a publication that has drastically regressed in readership and business results. More? The fact that Gantar expects his sanitary commandos to increase circulation by one half in a single year – which would still be a desperately low circulation – and thus reach at least a positive zero, confirms the suspicion that he does not see any special link between the content of a newspaper and its business results.

In all of this, of course, the craziest is the makeup of the crisis staff that Gantar has sent down. A famous RTV director, an editor of a gossip magazine, a sports journalist and a former mobile phone capitalist, who due to circumstances is doing some work in publishing? What a team! They are like the TNT group! How can anybody take people with such references seriously? And I had thought that businessmen were serious people, who play with their work! However, ruthless logicians of the colonization of a poor country, which a richer one can buy little by little, are good at best for Bosnia. True – if the story was not so ridiculous – it would be an inter-state scandal as much as it is proof that the media, in Slovenia and owned by Slovenians, are becoming a junkyard for those who, in that scene, have nothing better to do or do not now how to do it – nor do they know how to make money. Which is, obviously, the final stage.

A friend comforted me recently: ‘Newspapers, namely, are made by those who do not deserve them.’

Marko Crnkovic is an eminent columnist of the daily newspaper Finance published in Ljubljana. This article is carried from the daily Finance. Translated by: K.H. ©Media Online 2001. All rights reserved.

source: MHxJU
published by: Roland Brunner rbr@medienhilfe.ch date of release on this site: 3-12-2001

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