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.

Books for a buck

Yesterday was a historic day for lovers of books. The very first book outlet in Croatia has opened its doors. Books, new and used, are still expensive in Croatia, so a bargain book shop is no luxury. Until now, Croats could only buy a small selection of discounted books during the Zagreb book fair, Interliber, which is held once per year. Other events, like book sales of discarded library stock, don't exist as far as I know.
Profil, a publishing house and book shop chain, has opened an outlet branch in the new Outlet Center in Sveti Ivan Zeline. The Outlet Center is a little north-east of Zagreb, next to the highway in the direction of Budapest.

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.

Lifetime of a Homo universalis

Faust Vrančić, born in Šibenik is honoured as one of Croatia's greatest inventors and thinkers. He was a learned man, which meant in his days that he was active in many sciences: philosophy, history, lexicography and so on. But which were those days? New research suggests he was born on 1 January 1551 and died on 20 January 1617. His birthplace is now known too, and I have no doubt that Šibenik will turn that house into a tourist trap. I mean tourist attraction, of course.
Vrančić is mostly remembered for his parachute, which he called Homo volens, flying man. In 1617 he seems to have jumped from a tower in Venice to demonstrate his invention.
Considering the fact that Vrančić died on 20 January 1617, I suspect that his parachute did not work or that he caught a fatal cold, as I could not find any information about his death. Among his numerous achievements - suspension bridge, wind turbine - Vrančić's book with the lengthy title Dictionarium quinque nobilissimarum Europeae linguarum; Latinae, Italicae, Germanicae, Dalmaticae et Hungaricae stands out. In plain English: Dictionary of the five noblest European languages, Latin, Italian, German, Croatian and Hungarian. As you may conclude from the title, many countries have colonised Croatia but Britain was not one of them. You can read the work online (have some patience with user-unfriendly system) as it is one of the few books that the National and Scientific Library in Zagreb has digitalised so far.