Vreme

Vreme is a Serbian weekly magazine, whose first issue came out on 29th October 1990. The weekly was founded by a group of independent journalists, who had left the weekly news magazine NIN and the daily newspaper Borba, along with other journalists and political dissidents from Belgrade.

The formal founders were Zoran Jeličić, who was the first managing editor, Dragiša Bošković, Milan Milošević, Stojan Cerović, Dimitrije Boarov, Miloš Vasić, Lazar Stojanović, Srđa Popović, Vesna Pešić, Jurij Gustinčić, Boro Krivokapić, Mirko Klarin and Jug Grizelj.

The weekly Vreme has enjoyed marked editorial stability and has changed only two managing editors over the course of 19 years – the first was Zoran Jeličić in the period when the weekly was founded and the second – and current – managing editor is Dragoljub Žarković, a member of the team that conceived the magazine’s profile. Over the years, the weekly has preserved its independent, pro-European and liberal editorial line. During the 1990s, it was a symbol of independent media, which fiercly criticised the authoritarian regime in power at the time. Moreover, during that period international media most often cited precisely this weekly from the former Yugoslav region.

Vreme was founded as a private publication, owned by the journalists working at the magazine’s news desk. The journalists themselves have a decisive role in selecting the managing editor. The weekly Vreme is a rare national media which is owned by journalists themselves. When it was started, Vreme was owned by Srdja Popović and the memders of the news desk at the time. Later, Srdja Popović transferred his founding rights to his son, with whom the news desk of the magazine did not have any contact for a long time. During 1991, one of the co-owners of Vreme was YU Point, the company owned by Vuk Hamović, yet it soon withdrew from ownership, settling the debts the Vreme had at the time and distributing its ownership stake to the other existing shareholders. Since April 2008, Vreme has been owned by a group of journalists of the magazine who bought the ownership rights from the majority owner and several smaller shareholders, of whom some continue to cooperate with the magazine while others have severed all contacts.

Although owned by the journalists and enjoying institutionalised editorial independence in relation to its owners, the weekly Vreme has not been able to avoid the influence of big capital on its editorial policy. The report of the Anti-Corruption Council from 2011 states that the owners of Vreme have a registered debt in the official Register of Pledges on Movable Property and Rights due to a loan which they had taken out via the company V Film, which owes €370,000 to the company Delta Maksi, which was due to be repaid on 21st March 2012. In the meantime, the company V Film has been deleted from the register of companies and merged into the company Vreme, which owns and publishes the news magazine. According to the Anti-Corruption Council, the editorial policy of Vreme changed visibly during this period, which published very affirmative texts regarding the business operations of Miroslav Mišković, the then owner of Delta Maksi.

Many respected and well known Serbian journalists and editors began their careers in Vreme: the well-known caricaturist Koraks; Jug Grizelj – after whom a journalistic award for investigative reporting and spreading understanding among people was named; the columnist Stojan Cerović; the managing editor of Radio Televizija Srbije (RTS) Nenad Stefanović; the former managing editor of the daily newspaper Politika Ljiljana Smajlović; the former managing editor of Radio Beograd Dragan Radulović; Veselin Simonović, the director of Blic, was also an editor in Vreme; the ambassador of Serbia to the EU Roksanda Ninčić was also a co-founder of Vreme and a former journalist of the news magazine.

The weekly Vreme and the daily newspaper Danas have constantly been under attack by the government due to their independent editorial policies, having a critical stance towards the ruling regime and its structures. Although it has a small circulation, the weekly Vreme is still one of the most influential news publications in the country.