Borba (newspaper)

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Borba logo in its final incarnation from 2009.

Borba (Борба in Serbian Cyrillic) was a Serbian newspaper, formerly the official newspaper of the Yugoslav Communist League (SKJ). Its name is the Serbian and Croatian word for 'struggle' or 'combat'.

The newspaper was started in 1922 in Zagreb as the official gazette of the Yugoslav Communist Party (KPJ), a banned political organization since December 1920 that nevertheless operated clandestinely in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and later Kingdom of Yugoslavia.

History

The very first issue of Borba was published in Zagreb on 19 February 1922. Functioning as the banned Yugoslav Communist Party's propaganda piece, the paper played in important part in disseminating information among the party members, activists, and sympathizers.

On 13 January 1929, a week following the proclamation of King Alexander's 6 January Dictatorship, Borba got banned.

During World War II Borba was published in the Republic of Užice. After the World War II liberation by the Partisans, its publication moved to Belgrade.

After 1948, the newspaper was also published simultaneously in Zagreb. For a long time, Borba alternated pages in Serbian Cyrillic alphabet and Gaj's Latin alphabet in the same edition.

In 2002, more than a year following the overthrow of Slobodan Milošević, Borba along with its distribution network got purchased by Serbian businessman Stanko "Cane" Subotić who bought the government shares in the paper. However, under Subotić, the daily Borba barely survived, printing no more than several hundred copies a day while according to business records, the company's monthly revenues never exceeded €30,000.[1]

2009 short-lived revival

Redesigned Borba got announced in December 2008 with Ivan Radovanović presented as the paper's owner after reportedly buying it from fugitive Serbian businessman Stanko "Cane" Subotić.[2] Even before the first issue even appeared, there were accusations by vice prime minister Mlađan Dinkić that Subotić was still the paper's true owner with Radovanović only serving as the front man.[3]

Though announced for December, the first revived issue appeared on newsstands on 15 January 2009 under editor-in-chief Miloš Jevtović who came over from the state-owned news agency Tanjug. Content-wise, the paper's new format was conceived as something new on the Serbian print media market with no carried news wire items and press releases with only analysis of the current events as well as ongoing political and social trends. However, published by "Izdavačko preduzeće Novine Borba" using the Latin alphabet, the paper recorded poor sales (less than 3,000 copies per day) and ceased publication in October 2009 after less than a year.

References

  1. ↑ Investigation: Mystery Hangs Over Death of Yugoslavia’s Flagship Paper;BalkanInsight, 13 April 2011
  2. ↑ Predstavljene nove dnevne novine - "Borba";mondo.rs, 2 December 2008
  3. ↑ Ponovo izlazi Borba;B92, 2 December 2008
  • Newspapers of the world, XXII: "Borba", in: The Times, April 22, 1965, page 11

External links

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