How did you understand the initiative of the management takeover of N1 and other media outlets from the United Group? If you thought that the editors would pay the owners for an exit strategy, you are wrong. It is an attempt to make the business aware of the reality that N1 has become something much more than cable television and an Excel spreadsheet viewed by an employee of an investment fund. And that it is necessary for it to survive exactly as it is.
When students blocked the public service building in April, they showed on a video beam what they actually considered public service.
All this time, N1 was a small television station operating as part of a large international investment fund. When the owners began to negotiate with the state to weaken their media outlet, N1 responded with an initiative - if it's already for sale, we'll buy it.
The editors and journalists of N1, of course, do not have the money to buy a media outlet. What is needed are investors whom the editorial team will trust to let us do our job.
The current owner still swears by his commitment to the editorial independence of the media he owns in Serbia, but on a global level, he is announcing a withdrawal from all markets outside the European Union, and is slowly selling his businesses to the state - both in Bosnia and Montenegro and Serbia.
And it is known how the state operates with the media it controls, which is why freelance journalists have an additional obligation to themselves to do their job professionally.
"And also towards an audience of one, now in the millions, that we deal with and that has given us trust and that does not want to see editorial policy changed in any way or be threatened or put under pressure from - whether the owner, or the regime. Regardless. What we want is a clean situation, a free way of working, both for now and for the next few years," says Mihailo Jovićević, editor-in-chief of the Nova.rs portal.
Some of the world's major newsrooms exist in the form we know them precisely thanks to editorial takeovers.
"There are such cases and some large editorial offices have a foundation or trust behind them between them and the owners, like the Guardian, for example. The New York Times has a specific arrangement with personal owners so that only they can influence the newspaper's policy, not the other owners, who also consist of a large number of people. El Pais and some other large media outlets," says Snježana Milivojević, a retired professor at the Faculty of Political Science.
However, United Group media is in a unique position, as it is owned by an investment fund. Their business model is to build a business and then sell it for a price higher than the market price. Even then, smaller media managed to fight for autonomy, which is similar to the N1 proposal.
"It's not typical, but various media outlets have managed to find it. It's not uncommon to look for such a model in this time of creativity and change in the media world," says Milivojević.
All this without taking into account the possibility that an agreement with the state has already been reached - then the market value of the rights to, for example, broadcast the Premier League is as much as those who manage taxpayers' money are willing to pay.
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