Slobodna Bosna ceases printing after 24 years, moves online

Bosnian magazine Slobodna Bosna will no longer be published in print. The magazine is moving to a digital platform! This was announced by the editor-in-chief of Slobodna Bosna, Senad Avdić.

BH news agency Patria fully relays Avdić's text published on the occasion of Slobodna Bosna's transition from print to online platform:

This is the last issue of Slobodna Bosna in this format, paper, old-fashioned, obviously anachronistic. With the New Year, as the first magazine in the Balkans, we will move to a digital platform!
Late into the night, into the grey winter night, I stay with opera singer Ivica Šarić and string instrument virtuoso Edin Karamazov. All the songs have lined up, from Vardar to Triglav, the synergy of two great world music names, Šarić and Karamazov, sounds harmonious, magnificent: present them on any world music stage, and it will be a first-class sensation.
 
Ivica is from Kraljeva Sutjeska, probably born in Zenica, and Edin Karamazov is from Zenica, definitely born in Zenica. Karamazov tells me how pleasant, relaxed, and inspiring it was to collaborate with Sting on their joint album, which achieved global success. "Setting aside the fact that Sting is a great author, he is also a very well-mannered young man."
 
"And can you do a Catholic one for me?" I ask the two masters after they have "flipped through" the entire repertoire of Russian romances, Neapolitan canzonas, and gone through Frank Sinatra far and wide. "And which Catholic one is that?" one of them asks me. "The one Cardinal Vinko Puljić sings when he meets believers in an informal gathering: My thoughts fly to you, mother." "And while we're on the subject," Šarić recalls, "my mother asks why you're not on OBN anymore." And so it goes...
 
The next day, on a Serbian television, I watch and listen to the then Minister of Foreign Affairs and, more importantly in this case, the President of the Socialist Party of Serbia, Ivica Dačić, at a party rally in Novi Sad. Parliamentary elections are probably coming soon in that province, so all Serbian politicians have rushed to the Vojvodinian electorate, from Vučić to Dačić.
 
"Thanks to the policy of the Socialist Party of Serbia," Dačić says, "we abolished the 1974 Constitution and returned Vojvodina to Serbia, thus the Vojvodina case was not internationalized like the Kosovo case."
 
I attended those turbulent events in Novi Sad in the autumn of 1988 and wrote that it was not a spontaneous gathering of people based on the yogurt revolution, but a well-planned, organized, and paid project directed from Belgrade, i.e., from Slobodan Milošević. A few days later, at the International Press Center, in the middle of Belgrade, I received a "letter from readers"; from behind, I was hit in the back of the head and thrown to the ground by a certain criminal, at that time a Serbophile type, named Ratko Knežević. There were no ombudsmen, no media hotlines, no OSCE or similar institutions to support journalism at that time. Somehow, although I hid it like a snake hides its legs, the information that I had been knocked out in the capital of Yugoslavia reached my mother. She quickly called me without a moment's delay and yelled: "Son, get out of there, you always have something to eat and a place to sleep here." And that's how it turned out, with deferred payment.
 
A year or two later, in the autumn of 1991, the promotion of the first issue of Slobodna Bosna was held in the premises of the Sarajevo Youth Center. My mother was proud when she saw that the people she only watched on television cared about me to some extent, when I introduced her to Ivica Puljić, Jasmina Šipka, Nijaz Duraković, Davorin Popović... When she saw herself on Yutel that evening, her happiness knew no bounds, and her sugar levels returned to normal without insulin intervention.
 
At the end of that same year, 1991, after we published the article "Sarajevo on the Chetnik Crosshairs" on the cover of Slobodna Bosna, hundreds of anonymous calls flooded my home phone, and my poor mother had to respond to threats, insults, and curses as best she could. In the first weeks of the war, in April 1992, some of Juka's or Kruško's special forces burst through my front door at dawn. "And why do you need him?" my mother asked. "For an exchange," replied some uniformed joker. "Karadžić is offering Koljević and Plavšić for him."
 
We'll skip five or six years and here we are (hop!) in March 1999, at dawn, the home phone rings and my mother answers: "Senad is sleeping, sir, what did you say your name was?" "Vasiljević" "And the name?" "Aleksandar" "Well, now I'll tell you, general, that your JNA has made life bitter for both me and him and our entire family." It was at a time when NATO was bombing Serbia, and Slobodan Milošević desperately activated the long-time head of the Counterintelligence Service, Vasiljević, from mothballs to save what could be saved... A month or two later, my mother died.
 
"Did I answer Vasiljević sharply enough?" is one of the last questions she asked me.
 
"Better than Alija, Ganić, and Sefer combined," I reassured her.
 
It always bothered me, tormented me, weighed on me how much I and Slobodna Bosna contributed to my mother's diabetes. And I almost forgot: on this post-Christmas evening, besides Šarić and Karamazov, actor Emir Hadžihafizbegović was also present. "Do you remember, brother," Emir asks me, "how happy your mother was when we came to your house in the summer of 1994?" "How could I not remember," I almost burst into tears, "it's the only photo I have with my mother."
 
I almost went crazy one summer I spent in Zagreb when only one song from Prljavo kazalište's album, "About My Mother," was playing from all the music channels, from all the apartments and cafes. I almost got into an argument with my best friends, whom I was trying to convince that it was a retro, cheesy pop song, that Jasenko Houra didn't compose it as a nationalist anthem, and I was wrong.
 
As I finish this issue of Slobodna Bosna, the last in this format, paper, old-fashioned, obviously anachronistic, the question that troubles me is how I would explain to my mother, who for years visited a dozen kiosks every week to check how Slobodna Bosna was selling, that Slobodna Bosna will no longer be available at kiosks and that she should look at clicks on the internet and likes on social networks.
 
P.S. My friend Šefkija Vatreš, the chief operative of Sarajevo's "Pokop" (Funeral Services), also attended the evening gathering the night before last. I asked Šefko a month ago to repair the collapse of my mother's grave. It was done flawlessly. "Mom would be proud of you," Šefkija tells me as he sits with his wonderful family. I hope so, Šefko, I hope so...