people are only using social networks and web portals to inform and communicate with others? Data on consumers of traditional media are all devastating. There
are many reason for this: the old media consumers leave, they leave literally, and financial abilities of average citizens in Croatia become weaker, as well as in neigh- boring countries, so most of people give little bit of everything, and often daily con- sumption of newspapers. Newspaper publishers are halved. People are increasing- ly turning to online editions of newspapers. This trend is evident in editions that are registered in the Chamber of Commerce of Croatia according to data from the 2013 and Croatia to the Agency ABC from 2012.7 It is very difficult to find out exact
number of sold circulation, but the comparison of shown Copies may be obtained by approximate estimates. The differences are minimal data. It is a great pity that in Croatia is not customary in Imprint list nowhere indicates the current edition, so data (depending who uses them and how dispose with them) vary! Shown number of copies in this paper show that newspapers evidently lose old readers, but the number of new readers is not big enough to preserve the newspaper in the form that we know for the last fifty years. It is interesting fact that journalism students at the Faculty of Political Sciences in Zagreb, on question what newspapers read in print, the squad answer is negative, and they say that they are turned to the web pages of newspapers, meaning Facebook. Reasons cited for this are as follows: never acquired the habit of reading; simpler and more practical information via their smartphones, iPad, and PC! They do not see any problem in that. They simply belong to a new generation of interactive media audiences, quite satisfied with this way of quick information.
Table 1.8
Name of the best-selling daily
newspaper in Croatia ABC Agency (2012.) Gospodarska komora (2013.)
24 sata 125.194 125.194 (sale) and 49.525 (free)
Jutarnji list 57.047 copies 58.948
Večernji list 62.472 62.494
The data presented demonstrates that compared to the previous year circula- tion fall, a growing number of readers of newspapers who do not buy them already reviewed/read in a coffee shop/cafe. According to unofficial data, the owner of one of the largest media corporations EPH, Ninoslava Pavic, it is assumed that one sold
7 “ABC Croatian Agency is an agency that brings together advertisers, publishers and advertising
agencies whose role is to enable publishers to successful selling advertising space, advertisers and agencies to offer true information for efficient investment in advertising in the print media” Available at www.hnd.hr/hr/newslist/show/66590 (Visited 20.5. 2014.).
8 Data are made based on information available Croatian Chamber of Economy and Croatian Agency
newspaper an average of six people read at different public places.9 Ten years ago,
relationship newspaper and the number of readers was 1:3. In Croatia, there is a current fight for every reader, so every newspaper editorial board, which is contin- uously falling, is trying with popular and cheap subscriptions to attract older read- ers. What is the share of subscribers in the paper is hard to find, but in the Croatian context is often considered a trade secret!
Another change, that occurred in 2012, according to a survey by international agency Gemius which measures incoming content of the web portal, is reflected in the fact that the previous (2011) year, “the most widely read portals was not relat- ed to print - the first was Net.hr and Tportal and Index” (Paparela, 2013). Trend, observed in 2013, continues in 2014, seen by the data in Table 2. The editors of one of the most visited sites 24sata.hr find that there are more reasons why users are turning to web sites. Renato Ivanuš, editor of printed daily editions, 24 hours says: “We have something what many are talking about - integrated redaction, where every news travels first to the web then there is reworked and finished in the press and they get extra value ... (...) We are fast, first we introduce the breaking news, where you are constantly enrolling at a new sentence and here we get new readers.” One of the most popular Croatian news portal has an explanation for that growing consumption of news portal in Croatia as well as in response to the “control” of com- ments. On the web portal comments are carefully read and followed. Hrvoje Dorešić, executive editor of the online edition of ‘’24 sata’’ says: “Comment has become an im- portant part of the content is so important that the comments sometimes change ti- tles. ( ... ) According to readers’ comments we made corrections to the main text, and sometimes the comments create a new topic. An additional benefit is that it opens a space for discussion.” Other web portals also take into account the comments of the readers, so for example, in one part of the Croatian newspapers avoid anonymous comments, which can be extremely intolerant and intolerant to post them on Face- book site where people comment on the full name, although maybe with the fake profile. But, this is one way to at least turn down the hate speech that has become standard under various pseudonyms. These efforts are a step towards self-regula- tion and to what alone journalistic profession and journalism professionals can do to bring in minimum liability for the sentence or paragraph in the public sphere.
Table 2. describes trends in the use of web pages according to audience research agency Gemius Audience. With comparative analysis from the last few years have seen an increase in visitors’ online editions of newspaper publications in relation to the “pure” news portal. It is evident that the newspapers want to preserve their tra- ditional paper publications, but also open up the opportunity to invest in a website that is very much alive and carries everything that happens anywhere in the world.
9 Ninoslav Pavic: “Yesterday I received new information on circulation and readership Jutarnji.
According to them, Jutarnji list every day read 360,000 people. We share readership of 9.8 percent in a population of 3,700,000 people. available at http://www.jutarnji.hr/ninoslav-pavic---intervju- -u-ovoj-zemlji-ne-bi-uspio-ni-springer--cak-ni-najveci-europski-izdavac-ne-bi-se-mogao-nositi-s- nasim-uvjetima-i-zakonima/1035329/, Visited 23. 5. 2014.
In Croatia, the particular news portals simply abolished the comments below announcement modeled on the Swedish experience, for example, such as the pop- ular www.net.hr. How it may affect the number of users is difficult to answer, but the abolition of comments caused a frequent practice - extremely rude anonymous comments. Editorial obviously thought that the abolition is a better and cheaper way to preserve the credibility of the portal, the hiring of additional administra- tors who will look exactly everything that is left after reading the text. Can we say that the abolition of comments is a self-regulatory process? It certainly is not the best solution because people want to express their views and to allow them to be, and respond to cases of extreme expression. Sometimes it is a painful experience for the author whose text causes an outburst of insults. It is even worse when the germ exchange of insults between couple of authors “commentators” who, after a few answering have nothing to do with the text which connected them in so-called online talk. The worse outcome is when completely innocent people appear as col- lateral damage in the discussions unsubstantiated “commentators”. Despite all this, continuous indication of elementary decency and adherence to a code of conduct on the Internet, it is far better solution than a ban or deletion. But this is a process that happens overnight, and any form of self-regulatory bodies or government reg- ulation of electronic media will not be able to effectively respond to a vast forest of millions of web pages. The worst is to leave everything to chance. Finally, each individual man acts for itself, and not everyone reacts the same to offense that will not be erase from the Internet and are not true!
Table 2.10 1./2014 Number of visitors monthly 5./2013 Number of visitors monthly 11./2012. Number of visitors monthly 11/2011. Number of visitors monthly
24sata 1,221.334 net.hr 1.125.181 index.hr 1,014.033 net.hr 942.558
jutarnji.hr 1,090.307 24sata.hr 1,107.013 24sata.hr 1,006.112 tportal.hr 891.202
njuskalo.
hr 999.698 index.hr 1.012.891 jutarnji.hr 936.713 Indeks.hr 887.729
index.hr 992.336 jutarnji.hr 940.111 net.hr 922.287 24sata.hr 828.213
tportal.hr 881.459 njuskalo.hr 912.413 tportal.hr 908.665 njuskalo.hr 800.966
vecernji.
hr 862.791 tportal.hr 906.312 njuskalo.hr 865.694 jutarnji.hr 763.625
A growing number of Internet users in Croatia is encouraging, users’ inter- action media and political and economic elites, profiling different audience, and encouraging freedom of citizens who have a need to comment on various devel-
10 Part of the table is taken from the Poslovni Dnevnik from January 14, 2013, from work, “How to
prevent hate speech on news portals” by Robert Ivanuš, PhD student at Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb. All data are available on the website GemiusAUDIENCE, www.audience.com.hr, Visited, 24. 5. 2014.
opments and leave its comments. This is the essence of freedom of expression, but also a challenge to which there is still no real answers.