The Novosti weekly was originally launched by SNV in December 1999 in broadsheet format as a weekly publication primarily concerned with minority politics related to Serbs of Croatia. Since its first issue the magazine adopted a policy of linguistic pluralism and featured articles written in both Croatian and Serbian, and offered a mix of sections printed in Latin and Cyrillic scripts. However, its circulation was limited to subscribers and was not widely available in newsstands for the first ten years of its existence. In late 2009 the magazine underwent an extensive makeover in an effort to transform it into a weekly magazine which would also appeal to the mainstream public, with more space dedicated to commentary pieces and coverage of nationally significant political and cultural events, as well as investigative journalism. To that extent, the magazine hired a number of prominent columnists and intellectuals as commentators, including Viktor Ivančić, Boris Dežulović, Vladimir Arsenijević, Tomislav Jakić and Igor Mandić, and was for the first time made available for purchase at newsstands.
Criticism
and social commentary are integral part of Novosti editorial policy. This at some points caused strong criticism among some Croatian nationalists with dogmatic views on historical events such as Croatian War of Independence, who saw ridicule of militarism, Croatian military and national symbols as unacceptable excess of limits of freedom of speech. Some of them were calling for cancellation of funding the newspapers from public money, criminal prosecution or censorship. Some mainstream politicians in Croatia, including the president Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović, warned the editors that they shall take care what they are writing about implicitly calling them to use self-censorship. President stated that she consider journal satire to be inappropriate and similar to cartoons of Muhammad in foreign press such as Charlie Hebdo. On April 4, 2017Reporters Without Borders condemned "a campaign of lawsuits and verbal attacks that Croatian nationalist groups have been orchestrating for several months against Novosti, the newspaper of Croatia’s Serbian minority". Some of the sentences published in Novosti that made part of the Croatian public feel insulted, were following: "Asshole Croatia is a national state of assholes and their public service" "Scientists brag that they found the reason for existence of an appendix, while for Croatian sovereignty, up to this day, no one knows what it serves for, or does it even exists...". Initiators of the petition for repeal of the funding refer to the same tender criterium which enabled the funding of Novosti weekly, which states: "those who promote intolerance towards any national minority or majority, will be banned from contesting on tender in period of 3 years"
