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Daily OSLOBODjENJE
Newspaper Oslobodjenje was founded in 1943. On the eve of the
war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Oslobodjenje, with its around 3.000
employees, was among the biggest media houses in former
Yugoslavia, the biggest one in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Beside daily
Oslobodjenje, it was issuing 21 various publications.
Oslobodjenje’s building was among the most shelled form the
first days and constantly during the whole war. The building is
completely destroyed. But, people working for Oslobodjenje -
editors, journalists, workers in print and distribution - have
never surrended. They invested incredible energy to keep on the
daily under unbelievably difficult conditions. There was not any
single day during the wartime that Oslobodjenje did not reach its
readers. Editors and journalists of all nationalities were
working in a basement, on typewriters, in a cold room, often with
candle light in order to keep on informing the people on what was
happening in their besieged and shelled town and outside of it.
During all that time, Oslobodjenje has been keeping high level of
professional informing and got many international journalist
awards for that. With the peace time, the daily was faced with
another kinds of problems, not so hard as the ones from the
wartime, but not less serious.
1. One of the most important problems is the property status of
Oslobodjenje. The process of the property transformation was
started on eve of the war and was stopped by it. Presently,
Oslobodjenje is neither state, nor private-owned media. The
process to become shared company will be a long lasting and hard
one.
2. Working circumstance of the employees are still completely
inadequate. The print and distribution department are in the
seller and ground floor of the old, destroyed building, Editorial
staff is in a rented apartment, not enough big for working of all
journalists and editors in a proper conditions. The old building
can not be rebuilt, and for providing at least similar conditions
that were existing before the war needs a lot of finances and
investments.
3. Oslobodjenje is the only serious political daily in
Bosnia-Herzegovina. It’s completely independent editorial
policy, often openly critical towards the political establishment
is causing quite some problems in relation to the authorities and
the ruling party. Besides, the new daily - Dnevni Avaz -
pro-regime oriented and largely supported by the ruling SDA is
making a big competition to Oslobodjenje.
4. Oslobodjenje has its European edition aimed to inform the
great number of refugees in West European countries about the
events in their country. However, this project brings
considerable depths and represents a significant burden for the
paper’s budget.
5. Such a big media, with lot of employees, can not economically
survive only from sales of its editions. However, as the economy
is far from being completely restored, some incomes from the
advertisements will not come soon.
Daily Oslobodjenje has a special symbolic meaning for struggle
of journalist profession against madness of the war. After it had
survived the enormous horror , the peace times did not bring the
possibilities to have a stable development and the paper is still
dependent on financial support from abroad.
Address: Dzemala Bijedica 185, 71 000 Sarajevo
Tel: +387 71 442 404; Fax: + 387 71 442 403
Contact person: Mr. Mehmed Halilovic, Editor-in-chief
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P.O. Box, CH-8031
Zürich, Switzerland