Vjesnik

Vjesnik

The Vjesnik building in Zagreb
Type	Daily newspaper
Format	Berliner
Publisher	Narodne novine d.d.
Founded	24 June 1940
Language	Croatian
Ceased publication	20 April 2012
Headquarters	Slavonska avenija 4, Zagreb, Croatia
ISSN	0350-3305
Website	www.vjesnik.hr

Vjesnik was a Croatian state-owned daily newspaper published in Zagreb which ceased publication in April 2012. Originally established in 1940 as a wartime illegal publication of the Communist Party of Croatia, it later built and maintained a reputation as Croatia's newspaper of record during most of its post-war history.

During World War II, the first time when Croatia was an independent Nazi state, the paper served as the primary media publication of the Yugoslav Partisans movement. The August 1941 edition of the paper featured the statement "Smrt fašizmu, sloboda narodu" (transl. "Death to fascism, freedom to the people") on the cover, which was afterwards accepted as the official slogan of the entire resistance movement and was often quoted in post-war Yugoslavia.

Its heyday was between 1952 and 1977 when its Wednesday edition (Vjesnik u srijedu or VUS) regularly achieved circulations of 100,000 and was widely read across Yugoslavia.

Following Croatia's independence after its secession and the political turmoil in the early 1990s its once large circulation steadily began to dwindle. In 1990, after Croatia declared its independence from Yugoslavia, Vjesnik came under the control of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), at the time the ruling conservative party. Ever since the 1990s, Vjesnik was seen as always taking a pro-government editorial stance, and it even changed its name briefly in 1992 to Novi Vjesnik in an attempt to distance itself from its own communist history. The name, however, proved to be unpopular and was changed back that same year.

A sharp drop in average daily circulation occurred from 1997 (21,348) to 2005 (9,660) down from over 100,000 in 1960.

In early 2012 the paper ran into serious financial difficulties, and in April it ceased printing. By May 2012 Vjesnik operated only as a web portal. By June 12, 2012, the web portal was still accessible, but it was no longer updated. By July 2012 the web portal stopped functioning.