The Serbian public got its chance to read the new Nova daily newspaper on Wednesday after months of expectation and after resolving a number of obstacles, the United Media company said adding that the daily has a responsible editorial concept bringing its readers accurate and verified news.

“Over the past four months, we successfully resolved all barriers whose goal was to prevent Nova from every hitting the newsstands. When every printing press in Serbia refused to print the new daily, we did not give up because we felt that the media market, which is dominated by tabloids that are often abused for political purposes, has room for a decent, independent and objective newspaper which will report on issues important to the daily lives of the public,” the press release said.

“Setting up the Nova newspaper was a huge challenge for us because we did not expect this level of self-censorship in a country that wants to join the European Union, with companies afraid to agree to print the newspaper only because of its different editorial concept. We have seen that the authorities have indirectly established control over almost all media outlets and are not doing anything directly to create an environment in which the public will have a free choice of reading or watching what they want. That is why are even more proud that we can say that the Nova newspaper has been published and is accessible to every citizen of Serbia whose opinions are the only thing that matters to us,” United Media CEO Aleksandar Subotic said.

Talks with companies that print newspapers and magazines lasted two months. Politika, Borba, Ringier Axsel Springer, Color Press, Grafoprodukt gave a variety of excuses why they can’t agree to print the newspaper. After that a public invitation was issued to all printing presses that can publish daily newspapers but not one of them responded.

“As an international company operating in eight countries, United Media informed all relevant European officials and institutions about this worrying level of violation of media freedom and they are carefully monitoring the cases. We informed Prime Minister Ana Brnabic and Culture and Information Minister Maja Gojkovic on several occasions, calling them to react and do everything to allow all media outlets to operate under equal market conditions. Even though the executive authorities have a duty to secure media freedom in the country, there was no reaction from the Prime Minister and the Information Minister,” United Media said, adding that this is why the company decided to print the newspaper outside the country in the Croatian city of Osijek for distribution across Serbia.

Nova daily will be published six times a week – Monday to Saturday – on 32 pages at a price of 29 Dinars (1 Euro – 118 Dinars). The editorial team promises to have exclusive content and publish stories that others don’t dare or don’t want to publish. The daily will include columns by prominent journalists and public figures, attractive culture and entertainment content and exclusive sports interviews.

United Media is the leading media company in South-East Europe. We broadcast more than 55 TV channels and 28 portals, magazines and radio stations. The company includes N1 TV and portal, Nova TV, the Nova web portal, Sport klub, Danas daily newspaper, City Magazine monthly, Brainz science TV, children’s TV channels Pikaboo and Vavoom, Grand Production, the IDJ music TV channel, Cinemania and Hunting and Fishing channels.