Google News ignores the Balkans

Google News offers news from an impressive number of countries. It even honors the linguistic divisions of some countries: there is Google News België and Google News Belgique. The latter one extensively uses French media, like Le Monde, but that should only please the francophone Walloons. Google News België, in turn, also has articles from the Dutch press. The same goes for Suisse and Schweiz (Switzerland).
Something like that could perfectly work in the Balkans, or in the Serbo-Croatian speaking countries. There is a vast array of media, papers, portals and other "news" sites. Maybe not as much as in the rest of Europe, but still enough for Google News Balkans. After all, there is Google News Czech Republic and Hungary. How many people speak Czech anyway? 12 million, according to Wikipedia. Far less than the approximately 20 million speakers of Croatian, Bosnian, Montenegrin, Serbian of whatever alternative name you want to give to the language of the Western Balkan peoples. Google News Croatia will be called "Google Vijesti", Google News Serbia "Google Vesti". By drawing from a variety of Balkan sources (from Vreme to Dnevni Avaz to Jutarnji list) Google could naturally confront its readers with different, dissenting, neighborly opinions. Serbian papers and magazines are almost absent form the Croatian market (and vice versa, I believe) so foreign news is an online affair anyway. Do something with it, Google people.

Who is who on Croatian Crescent

I recently installed Google Analytics on my weblog and decided to share some data with you. Or rather, data about you if you are a regular reader of this blog. By the way, I have absolutely no idea who's actually following this blog. I secretly hope I have a small but faithful group of readers, but so far this blog is basically one-way traffic. That sounds better than saying I wish for more comments. Anyway, feel free to unburden your soul. Most of you live in these countries.
Slightly over 80 percent of you use a Windows operating system. Only 1 out of 20 use Linux, and I suspect that's me (Ubuntu 9.04). The top 10 of search terms shows an interesting mix of personalities: two dead people and a sex bomb. I am not sure should I cry of laugh about this. If I want to get rich from the adds on this site, I'd better devote the entire blog to Nives Celzijus. I do understand now why entertainment, sex and showbiz dominate the front pages of newspapers here (Jutarnji list, Večernji list, not to mention 24Sata). It sells. As a Croat you need to read Serbian newspapers (Danas) or magazines (Vreme, NIN) if you refuse to pay a euro for a lot of garbage and a bit of real news.
Other interesting search terms are "sushi" and "IKEA". You can eat sushi in two restaurants in Zagreb: Takenoko and Sora. Sora is located on the top floor of the "skycraper" on Zagreb's main square. It offers a fantastic view over Zagreb. The food is so-so (I got a deep fried sushi - a culinary novelty), but very expensive. I'd rather go to the local wok restaurant, if Zagreb had one...
For IKEA you still need to go to Graz. The good thing is you can get a VAT tax refund and an unforgettable experience.

Local elections

On 17 May Croats will go to the polls in local elections. To inform myself, I checked the main newspaper websites and TV stations. Surprisingly, it is Nova TV's website (a commercial station) that offers the most extensive information on the local elections. Their news program, Dnevnik, is usually rather sensational and focuses almost exclusively on Croatian affairs, in which respect it resembles Croatian newspapers. None of the newspapers nor state run public television HRT has a site about the elections.
In Osijek, Croatia's fourth largest city, the main candidates competing for the position of mayor belong to the right or extreme right. Krešimir Bubalo is leading the polls. Bubalo is a member of the HDSSB party, led by Branimir Glavaš who is charged with war crimes. His main opponent is Anto Đapić, who belongs to the HSP, a party known for its strong anti-Serb attitude.
Another interesting city to watch is Split, Croatia's second by size. In Split entrepreneur and independent candidate Željko Kerum is leading the polls. In national elections Split was firmly controlled by the governing HDZ party of prime minister Sanader, himself a son of Split and great fan of football club Hajduk. Kerum's political independence is part of a wider trend in Croatia towards non-aligned candidates for political posts.
Then, of course, there are the usual outsiders and irregularities. In Kaštela, a small town not far from Split, former porn star Lidija Šunjerga runs for the office of mayor. Her campaign is centered around gender equality and environmental protection. More worrying are reports about manipulation of the number of registered voters. Dusina, a tiny village in the Dalmatian hinterland, counts a total of 530 voters of which 404 are registered at the same address. You would need a skyscraper of 35 stories to accommodate so many voters at one and the same address, the paper Novi list calculated. In Zadar, 19 voters are registered at the address of a two-story house.
The political blog Pollitika launched a site where you can check how many voters are registered at a certain address. By looking up addresses and seeing the number of registered voters, Pollitika wants to map (literary) irregularities. This evening a television program on Nova TV will be dedicated to electoral manipulation, so Pollitika's map should get more details.

The paper crisis

Which is the fate of the Croatian press? This question was being debated at yesterday's round table conference on the future of Croatian newspapers, magazines and other periodicals. The media landscape in Croatia is not very diverse anyway, and newspapers are being hard hit by the economic crisis. Newspaper sales went down by 20 to 40 percent and advertising revenue with 30 percent.
One of the participants of the conference was Večernji list. In an article about the meeting it writes: "Although the facts indicate that the sale of newspaper copies is in decline, those present rejected the possibility that the press will disappear."
What I find most interesting is the word "facts". As a matter of truth, we know preciously little about the facts. For example, there are no data available on newspaper circulation and sales. We have no idea how many copies a paper like Jutarnji list or Vjesnik sells on average per day. A public opinion poll, done by Mediapuls, produced incredible statistics about newspapers and their readers in Croatia. Of all Croats 63 percent daily read a newspaper. What is most surprising is that these are not the pensioners that make up a large part of Croatia's population. An amazing 72 percent of young people, age 15 to 19, read a paper every day.
There are no official data to prove this poll wrong. But my gut feeling says it is wrong. I don't believe that more than two million Croats spend a euro per day on newspapers. I hardly see people reading newspapers in the tram and not a single family in my sizable apartment block is subscribed to a paper. Not even the National and Scientific Library in Zagreb is a subscriber! Can you image the British Library or the Library of Congress without a single newspaper?
I would not mind if some papers disappeared. Croatia's biggest paper, 24Sata, writes mostly about fun and sex, gossip, celebrities and "black chronicles" - murder, rape, corruption, you name it.
I am rather pessimistic by nature, but I do think that, also in Croatia, their is a market for a serious, non-aligned, internationally oriented newspaper. Or maybe a regional newspaper, if that would boost sales. That has nothing to do with "jugonostalgija" (Slobodna Dalmacija, for example, has a page on Bosnia). Serbia's Politika issues a regional edition, but unfortunately it is printed in Cyrillic only.
If you have data about newspaper sales and the media landscape in Serbia, Slovenia, Bosnia or Montenegro, former Yugoslavia, the Western Balkans, South Eastern Europe, this part of Europe or what ever you want to call this region, please comment below.

Black chronicle

Whether it is unique to newspapers in this region or a more widespread phenomenon, I don't know, but it was new to me: the Crna kronika (black chronicle) section in newspapers where you can read all about murder, rape, corruption, accidents and other evils. An absolute low is 24Sata, a daily that doesn't deserve the name newspaper. But also a more serious - though not too serious - paper like Jutarnji list can't do without a daily portion of human misery. I wish Croatian newspapers focused a bit more on other things. You would say that since Croatia is a small country many important events happen outside its borders, but these miraculously fit on either one or two pages. Well, in der Beschränkung zeigt sich erst der Meister, let's see it that way.
The obsession of Croats with the dark side of life can also be seen on the news on television. Dead people, either shot like Ivo Pukanić or smashed in a car accident, are shown without much regard for the family. Maybe the war made the media and viewers numb but some consideration for the post-war generation wouldn't do anybody harm.

Obituary of a newspaper

After two and a half years, Metro Croatia issued its last edition on Friday. Due to financial problems, Croatia will lose its one and only free paper. Croatia proved to be too small for the biggest newspaper on earth. One wonders why, because earlier this year market research agency Mediapuls revealed fantastic statistics about newspapers and their readers in this country. Some 63 percent of all Croats read daily a newspaper. And we're not talking about the pensioners that make up a large part of Croatia's population. An astonishing 72 percent of young people, age 15 to 19, read a paper every day which places them in the top of Europe. Croatia reverses the almost global downward trend in readership.
It's almost too good to be true. So I think it's not true, although I can't prove it. For reasons unknown to me Croatian newspapers don't disclose information on their sales, so I must rely on my own observations. First of all, you rarely see someone reading a paper in places where you expect people to kill time with news, like trams and trains - and believe me when I say they move slow enough to get bored with the landscape. Also, I doubt most Croats have the financial means to buy a paper everyday. A paper costs almost 1 euro, which is much more expensive than in other countries. Maybe it's the many photographs in full colour that drive up the price, as I don't believe that the few foreign correspondents earn a fortune.
The general problem is the lack of a newspaper culture, if I may say so. Croatia was for centuries part of the Habsburg empire, which meant among other things that the emperor himself had to grant permission to someone who wanted to start a newspaper. Literacy in nineteenth century Croatia was very low and for literate people some German papers were available. Under communism the literacy rate improved dramatically, so more Croats could read that workers in capitalist countries were starving to death.
Unfortunately, public and scientific libraries here don't seem to care much about newspapers either. In most libraries you'll search in vain for papers and digitalizing archives has't even started, except for one Istrian paper.