More Than a Game

This year, the award of the World Association of the Newspaper Publishers (FINEJ), the Golden Pen of Liberty, will be on July 2 in the hands of Dusan Mijic, the owner of Nasa Borba daily. Devoted to the freedom of the press, this regular yearly award of FINEJ was equally awarded to Nasa Borba, Oslobodjenje and Feral Tribune, and will be handed to them in Amsterdam during the opening of the 50th World Congress of the Newspaper Publishers and the Fourth World Forum of the Newspaper Editors.

This was the motive for our conversation with Mijic, but the main topic was not the freedom of the press, but the newspaper as the merchandise which opens the opportunity of gaining profit for the private enterpreneur. That's why we have started the conversation with the question:

Did you start this business in order to make money?

I was already wealthy when I started this business (although I believe that Yugoslavia has no wealthy people but only moderately poor ones, who just seem rich compared to the economic misery around us). Therefore, that was not my motive. At the beginning of the 90s I had the choice to withdraw, retire, with the capital I already had in my hands, or to keep playing the game. I dreaded the very thought of retiring, no matter how easy that life seems when you are young and financially well-off. So I decided to play on.

Why with the newspaper?

I heard by accident that the shares of Borba d.d. were being sold, and since I always try to follow the rule that when everybody is seeding potatoes, I should seed beans, I entered this business because nobody invested in the newspapers in those days.

You are considered to be the man with more ideas than money.

Thank you, I am glad that it is so.

Do you expect to get money for the new ideas from abroad?

If one starts from that point, the money may even come; if we wait to get the money, it will never come. Personally, I am more interested in the quality credit lines than in aid.

There are many stories about that aid. Some say it will be used for personal needs, that it relativizes the independence of the newspapers...

The received funds must always be documented to see if they are spent for the purpose they were given for in the first place. I can prove to the public that my investment is greater than the investment of the international community. I wouldn't like to mention the figures, but my investment is much greater than the received aid, even double that sum. But this is not very important; the important thing is that the major part of the newspaper's income comes from the readers. That which is important for the Nasa Borba project is that the newspaper is supported by someone who will cover everything which is necessary in the moments of crisis, because the newspaper must be published tomorrow, it can't wait until the aid arrives. It is necessary to get five tons of paper, the printing shop must be paid. I was always ready, and I am ready now, to back up the newspaper in those critical moments, with all my moral and financial capacity.

However, both our ministers and our government visit the same places

seeking aid. Why would that which I am asking for be less valuable than that which they are asking for?

Is it true that Bogoljub Karic has offered to buy Nasa Borba from you?

He has offered to buy my shares of Nasa Borba d.d. before.

And Nasa Borba?

No. He has offered some sort of cooperation in the media, but nothing concrete. But I heard that he has also offered to buy Vreme weekly. This is a quite understandable story that can be applied to all the newspapers.

Mr. Mijic, regardless of all big ideas and concepts, it would still be naíve to believe that you did not expect to make a profit from Nasa Borba.

Of course, I haven't thrown away several millions of deutch marks. I believe that I have invested them into the newspaper which holds the serious position today. The key moment of today's economy is to occupy the best possible position, before the foreign capital starts flowing in. Our position should be the position of the biggest possible obstacle when the time comes that someone starts giving big money for something like that. One day it will be to our advantage that we were thrown out in the street, all evil will return to us as good, our newspapers will become interesting because there is a story about us, everyone in the world knows about us. Nasa Borba can not be removed by anyone, it is the symbol of something much greater that Dusan Mijic, the owner of Nasa Borba. The place it occupies is the most important and it was the matter of my business estimate.

I know what I've got, I know how I manage it, what I am making, whom I should be in the meantime and how to make the point in the end. You ask me when? I don't know, it does not depend on me.