Nedjeljna Dalmacija

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nedjeljna Dalmacija is now defunct Yugoslavian regional weekly newspaper based in Croatia, published in the cities of Split and Zagreb.

Nedjeljna Dalmacija ("Sunday Dalmatia" in Croatian) started as special weekly edition of Split daily newspaper Slobodna Dalmacija in 1970s. The paper gradually began to develop its unique editorial policy, most notably in covering topics that were banned in popular daily newspapers, but tolerated by Communist government in less-read weeklies. Even that, Nedjeljna Dalmacija suffered because of purges following Croatian Spring and had to resort to hiring reporters and columnists from other republics of Yugoslavia. The best known was Serbian journalist Aleksandar Tijanić, ironically called "Giant of Croatian Journalism".

Nedjeljna Dalmacija reached its zenith in late 1980s, when it was among first Yugoslav newspapers to break certain taboos, like reporting about exploitation of prisoners or publish scripts from the banned film WR: Mysteries of the Organism. The newspaper also featured a humour section run by the trio that would later become famous as Feral Tribune.

The arrival of multi-party democracy in 1990 witnessed a gradual shift of editorial policy. While Slobodna Dalmacija became more open to various political options, Nedjeljna Dalmacija shifted rightwards and embraced Croatian nationalism. This process was completed with 1993 takeover of Slobodna Dalmacija by Miroslav Kutle and change of editorial policy towards even more hardline nationalism. Nedjeljna Dalmacija was, just like Slobodna Dalmacija, owned by Kutle and suffered from poor management, economic woes of war-torn Dalmatia and loss of readership to new and more attractive weekly newspapers like Slobodni tjednik, Globus, Nacional and Feral Tribune. In late 1990s editorial offices were, for financial reasons, moved from Split to Zagreb, but this could not prevent Nedjeljna Dalmacija from being extinguished.