It was exactly this time 30 years ago. It was a hot summer in 1988. The older colleagues, editors and journalists of Večernji list were on vacation, and they left us younger ones to train, among other things, for weekend shifts.
It was Saturday around noon. The phone rang. It was the editor-in-chief Stjepan Štef Andrašić. He was vacationing in a small place on Krk, but he came to the local community every day. There was the only phone in the place (I know it seems incredible to younger people, but there was a time when journalism was done without mobile phones and the internet) and he would call us at least twice a day.
That Saturday, it was not a question of what we were preparing for the Sunday issue. I received an unexpected task:
– We need to launch a business supplement in Večernji list. Make a project so we can start at the beginning of 1989. The release day will be Wednesday.
‘Poslovnjak’s’ descendants
Štef was the editor-in-chief of Večernjak, but he had a pronounced entrepreneurial-managerial streak. Večernjak was highly profitable, but since it was part of SOUR Vjesnik (today we would say it was part of a conglomerate), most of the profits went to the common treasury. Attempts to become independent were unsuccessful. The argument was that we were not a company because we had only one product – daily newspapers. So the idea was to first create special supplements, and then, after six months, turn them into independent weeklies. And to become independent.
We launched the supplement in April 1989, it was called ‘Poslovni svijet’, but it never grew into an independent weekly. In the year of its launch, the Berlin Wall fell, the breakup of Yugoslavia began, and then the war. ‘Poslovnjak’ remained a supplement of Večernjak for 14 years before it was shut down. But it was the foundation on which several business newspapers were created. So it could be said that Lider and Poslovni dnevnik are its two descendants. And that they, each in their own way, turned out to be market winners in turbulent and challenging times.
Why is this the topic of this Ekonomalija? There are several reasons. First, Lider was established as a business weekly in 2005, but it was ideologically, editorially, and entrepreneurially created on the foundations of the idea from 1988 and the realization from 1989. And readers often want to know what the ‘secret’ life of the editorial offices that create the newspapers they consume looks like. Second, the upcoming 30th anniversary of the launch of ‘Poslovni svijet’ could be an occasion for a more serious analysis of three decades of business journalism in Croatia, which would also contribute to the currently very modest scientific analysis of the transition in Croatia. Third, by a twist of fate, the journey from ‘Poslovni svijet’ to Lider has become a specific example of media entrepreneurship. From which one can learn from others’ successes and failures.
