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Blic (Cyrillic: Блиц, ) is a web portal covering politics, economy, entertainment, and current events. The first printed edition of Blic was published in 1996, its online portal was launched in 1998, and Blic TV began broadcasting in 2022. Blic is part of Ringier Serbia's portfolio, which belongs to the international media company Ringier, headquartered in Switzerland. According to Gemius Audience research, Blic has been Serbia's most visited news portal since 2012.
The initial owners of Blic, Austria-based businessmen Aleksandar Lupšić and Peter Kolbel, sold the paper along with its parent company Blic Press d.o.o. in November 2000 to Gruner + Jahr, a German publishing firm majority-owned by the Bertelsmann conglomerate, right after the October 5th overthrow in Serbia. Gruner + Jahr wird 49% des jugoslawischen BLIC-Verlages übernehmen, G+J press release, 9 November 2000 Initially, G+J bought 49% stake in Blic Press d.o.o., Invasion of the Magazine Snatchers; BusinessWeek, 7 April 2002 but eventually bought the remaining stake as well.
In March 2003, Gruner + Jahr sold its 25.1% stake in Blic Press d.o.o. to Vienna Capital Partners (VCP) Strasser wird VCP-Manager und hält auch 10 Prozent der VCP-Anteile while retaining the remaining 74.9%. VCP cooperates with Gruner + Jahr ;VCP AG press release, 27 March 2003
After buying 74.9% stake in Blic Press d.o.o. from Gruner+Jahr in January 2004, 'Ringier' preuzima 'Blic'; Blic, 25 October 2003 Ringier assigned Attila Mihók to be the CEO of its new Serbian subsidiary that got renamed Ringier d.o.o. He performed the job until November 2007 and was in July 2008 succeeded by Jelena Drakulić Petrović.
In 2010, when Ringier AG and Axel Springer SE launched a new joint venture Ringier Axel Springer Media, Blic got incorporated among the assets of the newly created joint venture entity while Ringier d.o.o. in Serbia changed its name to Ringier Axel Springer d.o.o.
In 2021, the media company Ringier announced and completed the acquisition of Axel Springer SE's shares, making Ringier Serbia once again 100% Swiss-owned.
In 2022, Blic TV was launched, and Blic Sport evolved into Sportal.rs. Predrag Mihailović was appointed as the director and editor-in-chief of Sportal, while Marko Stjepanović became the editor-in-chief of Blic.
Other online offerings from Ringier in Serbia include PulsOnline.rs and Zena.rs.
Prior to that, the same group took over a Prague newspaper where they gained valuable publishing experience which encouraged them to go on further. For their Serbian operation, the owners got seasoned journalist Manojlo "Manjo" Vukotić to be the editor-in-chief.
Just like many other media operations in Serbia from the 1990s and beyond, Blic's ownership structure was murky as well. It was controlled by an entity called Blic Press d.o.o. - a limited liability company registered in Belgrade in March 1996. Blic Press' owners according to the Serbian Business Register were listed to be Milorad Perovic, a resident of Belgrade (51%) and Liechtenstein-based company named Mitsui Securities Eastern Europe Fund AG (49%) whose owners were not listed.
Starting out, Blic was a typical stripped-down tabloid with short and simple stories, as well as a lot of entertainment content. Its first issues were circulated in 50,000 copies per day with the price set at 1 dinar. It also ran a heavily advertised sweepstakes with the grand prize being a Volkswagen Polo Classic car and Deutsche Mark30,000. As a result of the sweepstakes, the paper's circulation increased by 30% within only a couple of weeks of the first issue.
In the circumstances when state media made virtually no mention of the protests and the reporting of the independent media was insufficient on the subject, Blic made a gutsy decision to devote a sizable part of its paper every day to the protests. The government responded immediately by restricting Blic's access to print and distribution facilities as the state printing house refused to print any more than 80,000 copies of the paper. The problem first appeared when it came time to print the 29 November 1996 holiday 4-day issue (FR Yugoslavia at the time still celebrated the old SFR Yugoslavia's day of the republic) as the state-owned Borba printing facility informed Blic staff that it's not able to print the holiday issue in the requested 235,000 copies "due to technical reasons" and instead offered to print about a third of that. The holiday issue still appeared on newsstands in projected circulation as some of it got printed at Borba and the rest in privately owned ABC Produkt. However, the issue that appeared was a complete whitewash, abandoning the paper's new concept and going back to entertainment and frivolity. Forty three journalists employed at Blic immediately publicly distanced themselves from the issue, and editor-in-chief Manjo Vukotić and his deputy Cvijetin Milivojević resigned in protest.
The most controversial part of the issue was the pro-government op-ed piece under the headline "Nećemo da podstičemo nasilje" (We won't encourage violence) signed by Peter Kolbel who wrote it claiming to represent the paper's owners. In the piece he criticizes the protesters and indirectly supports the government, saying among other things that "Yugoslavia needs creative people and not wolves who follow the alpha wolf and hunt in packs" - a veiled reference to opposition leader Vuk Drašković whose first name Vuk translates to "wolf". Clearly, since certain influential individuals within the state apparatus were unhappy with the paper's reporting, Blic made guarantees to decrease reporting on the protests and to decrease circulation for the time being. Blic publishers caved in under state pressure and drastically reduced the number of political pages.
Blic owners faced a lot of criticism over their decision to give in to the authorities. The move was criticized by many of its journalists and editors along with the Serbian opposition. As a response, in December 1996, the journalists and editors formed their own newspaper Demokratija that had the support of opposition Democratic Party (DS). Still, Vukotić and many of the staffers that originally distanced themselves from the paper returned to Blic shortly and for a few months put out a stripped-down version of the paper with only 60,000 copies printed each day.
All in all, as a result of the unsavory episode, Blic quickly lost half its circulation, as well as many of its journalistic staff who resigned in protest.
Blic then contracted a new printing house, resumed a critical line and soon increased its circulation to nearly 160,000. Jovanka Matić: Problems facing Quality Press Development in Serbia
And finally, the story also accused Serbian Interior Minister Dragan Jočić of stopping the police investigation from climbing up the chain of command and thus preventing the arrests of NBS governor Radovan Jelašić and the above-mentioned Dušan Lalić, as well as SPS' Ivica Dačić who was present in the mentioned apartment minutes before the police stormed in. The paper voiced its fear that the minority coalition government, which held a shaky 5-seat parliamentary support at the time, would fall as Jočić's motivation for disrupting the thorough police action.
All of the parties concerned (Labus, Lalić, Jočić, Jelašić, and Dačić) vehemently rubbished the story, with Labus announcing immediate legal action against Blic for libel.
In March 2007, the parent company announced Blic's average daily circulation during the 2006 calendar year to be 180,948. Blic pres planira rast prihoda;B92, 30 March 2007
Conducted by journalist Nenad Jaćimović, the focus of the Blic interview was on cigarette smuggling operations through Serbia during the 1990s and its political fallout that continues to this day. In the interview, Knežević accused Đukanović, Subotić and their "cigarette smuggling cartel" of defrauding the Serbian budget of €300 million in unpaid taxes with the help of Jovica Stanišić, Serbian former state security chief and Milošević's second in command. Knežević further alleged that since the regime change in Serbia, Đukanović and Subotić needed a "friendly" government in Belgrade and to that end tried their best for years to reach a deal with Serbian president Boris Tadić and his circle. After allegedly getting nowhere with Tadić, according to Knežević, they then turned their attention to other players on the Serbian political scene such as Tomislav Nikolić and Aleksandar Vučić who met with Đukanović and Subotić during October 2007 in Paris' Ritz Hotel. Furthermore, according to Knežević, for this Đukanović and Subotić had the support of former DGSE intelligence operative Arnaud Danjean. Knežević also claimed that the cigarette cartel also poses a security threat to Boris Tadić and that even Croatian president Stipe Mesić gave Tadić documents during their meeting in Sofia on April 25, 2009 warning him of possible attacks on him.
Subotić announced that he would sue Blic for libel. After Subotić wrote a press release that was distributed in Balkan print media outlets on August 11, 2009, in which he denies Knežević's charges and further questions Knežević's and Blic editor-in-chief Veselin Simonović's professional and moral credibility, Knežević wrote a lengthy response saying that he stands by every word from his Vijesti, Blic and NIN interviews. In the same response, Knežević also provided further details of the murders of Radovan "Badža" Stojičić, Jusuf "Jusa" Bulić, Vanja Bokan, Goran Žugić, Darko "Beli" Raspopović, and Blagota "Baja" Sekulić (all of which he claimed are connected to cigarette smuggling with the murders of Stojičić, Bulić, and Bokan directly ordered and approved by Stanišić, Subotić, and Đukanović) by directly naming the individuals that carried them out as well as those that ordered them.
A public opinion survey conducted by the Center for Research, Transparency, and Accountability (CRTA) in November 2022 showed that among internet portals and newspapers, citizens most frequently follow Blic, and Blic is also the one they trust the most. CRTA noted that it is interesting that trust and readership are not usually aligned, except in the case of Blic, which ranks first on both lists according to the surveyed citizens.
Blic is the most trusted brand and the leading choice in the daily newspaper category in Serbia and this was confirmed by the recognition from the independent organization ICERTIAS, based in Switzerland, for 2024/2025, based on detailed market research.
Award from the Coordination Body for Gender Equality, EU, and UN Women for the testimonies of Miroslav Aleksić's rape victims.
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