alo.rs
The Alo.rs portal was launched in 2007 as an online edition of the daily newspaper Alo. The portal and newspaper were founded and published by the company Ringier, which was also the owner and publisher of the daily Blic. The Swiss-German company Ringier Axel Springer owned the Alo portal from its founding in 2010 until July 2017, when it was sold to another company.
Given that it was established by the same owner as the daily Blic, in terms of content, Alo is less informative and politically profiled than Blic, and its style is closer to tabloid journalism. Since July 2017, the owner of the Alo.rs portal is Saša Blagojević through the company Alo media system.
Blagojević is the CEO and one of the co-owners of the marketing and consulting agency known as Trilenium. He has owned the Belgrade media, RTV Studio B, since June 2018, through his company Global Media Technology. Media in Serbia reported that Saša Blagojević is close to the ruling Serbian Progressive Party.
The company Alo Media System was founded in March 2017 under the name of Dnevne novine Alo, three months before the publisher Ringier issued an official statement about the sale of this newspaper. In June 2019, the company changed its name to Alo Media System.
Alo Media System shared the address with the company Ringier Axel Springer from its foundation until February 2018, when the registered seat of both companies moved to Kosovska Street in Belgrade. Blagojević's company Global Media Technology is at the same address.
In the report on compliance with the Code of Ethics for Journalists in daily newspapers from October 1, 2022, to January 31, 2023, the Press Council claimed Code violation in 581 articles published in the Alo newspaper, putting this paper in the second place, just behind the daily Srpski Telegraf (658), by the number of violations.
The company Alo Media Systems regularly receives money from local government media calls. From 2019 to 2022, according to the data on public calls available from BIRN's database, this company was awarded at least 37 million dinars (approximately 338,000USD) of state budget for 32 projects through the mechanism of open calls. Newspapers and portal received money from the local budgets of Belgrade, Novi Sad, Niš, Subotica, and Kraljevo.
Audience Share
7.05%
Ownership Type
Private
Geographic Coverage
International
Content Type
Free
Media Companies / Groups
Alo Media System
Ownership Structure
The publisher of the daily newspaper Alo and the online publication Alo.rs is the company Alo Media System, which bought the newspaper from Ringier Axel Springer in July 2017. This company is 100% owned by Saša Blagojević.
Individual Owner
General Information
Founding Year
2007
Affiliated Interests Founder
published the daily newspaper Alo in 2007, and the paper became the property of Ringier Axel Springer doo in 2010 when the company was founded.
In 2013, Ringier opened the APM innovative printing house for printing papers within this group, attended by Aleksandar Vučić, then the first vice-president of the Government of Serbia.
This media company was founded in 1996 and is part of the Swiss media group Ringier AG, which operates in Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa.
In Serbia, as the publisher of the Blic, the company was founded in 1996, operating under the name of Ringier Axel Springer Srbija as part of the Swiss-German media group Ringier Axel Springer Media AG from 2010 to 2022.
In 2022, the media company Ringier AG completed the acquisition of shares in Axel Springer SE in Serbia, Slovakia, Hungary, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, and with a presence in Romania and Bulgaria, became a leader in the media and digital market of nine countries in Eastern and Central Europe.
When it comes to periodicals, i.e., specialized magazines, weeklies, and the like, Axel Springer "holds" as much as 50-60 percent of the market in Serbia, primarily with magazines intended for female audiences - Blic žena and Blic puls. Economic and political magazines, including the weekly NIN, participate with 20 to 30 percent in the total number of copies.
In the daily newspaper printing market, Ringier Axel Springer dominates with its printing house APM Print, which prints 70 to 80 percent of the daily press - to a lesser extent for its own needs (Blic) and to a greater extent as a service (also printing the Informer, Alo, and Kurir).
Ringier Axel Springer sold the daily Alo to Saša Blagojević in 2017.
Affiliated Interests Ceo
Since 2017, Saša Blagojević and Dragan Lazić have been following one another in the position of the CEO of Alo Media System. Today, according to the Serbian Business Registers Agency, Dragan Lazić is the CEO. Lazić is the president of the Chess Federation of Serbia and a former manager in private companies, such as the construction company Inter-kop, which was close to the Democratic Party, and is now in bankruptcy.
The partnership of the Chess Federation of Serbia with the controversial construction company Millennium Team, which has close relations with the ruling party, has shown that Lazić did not completely cut ties with construction.
Lazić is a representative of the APM Print printing house, providing printing services to the Ringier company, and since recently in the ownership of a waste company from Čačak.
He is on the supervisory board of several companies, including Radio Indeks and Radio S, and Maksim Media Plus, where Blagojević is the co-owner. This company owns several radio stations (TDI, HIT FM) and is known for "taking over" Studio B after the Serbian Progressive Party came to power in Belgrade, drastically changing the editorial policy of the iconic city radio-television.
Affiliated Interests Editor-In-Chief
the Editor-in-Chief of Alo!
Affiliated Interests other important people
The submissions to the APR for the change of legal representatives of Alo Media System were submitted by lawyer Igor Isailović, known for his cooperation with the Minister of Finance Siniša Mali, and he also had a company with the Prime Minister of Serbia, Ana Brnabić, who refers to him as a "friend". He represents the newspaper Alo in the courts.
This lawyer is often hired by Nikola Petrović, the godfather of Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, Milutin Folić, the former first city planner of the City of Belgrade, and Isailović's most controversial client is the notorious businessman from the north of Kosovo, Zvonko Veselinović, whom he helped establish companies.
He also appears in the "Pandora Papers" because he set up a secret account in the British Virgin Islands.
Contact
Kosovska 26/3
Stari Grad, Belgrade
E-mail: office@alo.rs, redakcija@alo.rs
W: alo.rs
T: +381 11 400 32 40
Financial Information
Revenue (in Mill. $)
Missing data
Operating Profit (in Mill. $)
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Advertising (in % of total funding)
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Market Share
Missing data
Further Information
Headlines
Meta Data
Missing data on market share and advertising revenue. Financial data is available only for the company that publishes the media, but not for the media itself. Official data on ownership are publicly available on the website of the Business Registers Agency.
