Feral Tribune - Financial Troubles and Closure

Financial Troubles and Closure

In June 2007, Feral Tribune missed two weekly issues due to financial problems. The editorial staff announced that their bank accounts have been blocked due to a VAT debt, and that several court rulings against Feral Tribune have imposed additional strain on their accounts. The editorial staff accused the Croatian government of favoring governmental and nationalist media by writing off their VAT debts, thus creating an unfair competition to Feral. The finance ministry’s decision to freeze the weekly’s bank accounts was widely condemned in Croatia.

Croatian officials, including the President Stjepan Mesić and the Prime Minister Ivo Sanader both pledged help to Feral Tribune, both acclaiming it as a contributor to the development of democracy in Croatia, but no help was actually offered.

On June 28, 2007, Feral Tribune was again published and it was reported that due to financial difficulties Feral Tribune was to be bought by Europa Press Holding (EPH), the largest publisher in Croatia (Globus, Jutarnji list) provoking speculation regarding the future of Feral's independence. However, in June 2008, since Europa Press Holding (EPH) officials started avoiding Feral's officials in takeover negotiations, Feral Tribune editors announced the end of the magazine. After 15 years, and numerous lawsuits from politicians, editors cited financial troubles due to lack of funding and the failure of negotiations with Europa Press Holding as the causes.

Throughout its entire history, Feral journalists investigated and issued articles on numerous political and financial scams, court jamming, war crimes, government corruption and many other law infractions. This policy brought them many enemies in political and financial centers of power. Even in the last 2-3 editions, Feral brought 5 new scandals to light which no other newspaper or TV stations were allowed to speak about. For this part of Europe, that is quite common, since most of the media are owned by few strong publishers who are closely connected with politicians.

All this has brought Feral into an interesting situation. They were issuing newspapers without advertisements. No company in Croatia was interested in advertising themselves in Feral Tribune due to strong bans from most Croatian political parties. Each company that tried to advertise in Feral Tribune was threatened with financial inspections and closure of their business and cooperation with other companies. So, Feral was faced to cover their expenses with income made by selling their newspaper. Even though Feral had good sales percentages, today it is almost impossible to finance newspapers without the income of advertisers and that brought Feral deep financial troubles.