Daily newspapers published by the group ” Media Print Macedonia” (MPM), such as “Dnevnik” “Utrinski” and “Vest” saw Friday and the weekend restricted to a reduced circulation, owing to an alleged “shortage of paper”.
This situation, can been noticed at newspaper stands, where yesterday and today it has been hard to find copies of the three newspapers. At yesterdays meeting between trade union representatives of the media and the Union of Journalists and Media Workers (SSNM), they discussed the situation regarding the delay in salaries in recent months.
The fact that newspaper circulation is decreasing can been seen at newsstands, and even news vendors have claimed that recently they have received a much smaller number of newspapers than normal, other places have reported that there has been a 80% decrease in numbers.
Jana Stanisavljeva, the Executive Director of the company claims that this information is not true.
“This is not true, the circulation of newspapers is normal”, Stanisavljeva told us.
We were promised an answer by Aleksandar Dinev, a manager at MPM. He said he was unable to give us an answer this weekend, but would on Monday.
In late July, this year, MPM dismissed 19 employees, mostly journalists. This move, which was condemned by the Association of Journalists (AJM), was justified by the company as an “economic measure”. The employees who were dismissed have yet to recieve the promised retirement benefits they are entitled to, and some of them had filed lawsuits after leaving the company.
The owners of the three newspapers is the company “Media Print Macedonia” Ltd Skopje, which is formed by deposits of nearly 2 million euros, and is the daughter company of “Graphic Center”. However, MPM is actually owned by three other companies.
- “Orka Holding” AD Skopje owned by Orce Kamchev
- “Mireks Plus” Ltd owned by Srgjan Kerim
- “Internet Investment Group”, Novi Sad, Serbia owned by Veselin Jevrosimovik
However, in early August this year, BIRN announced that Jevrosimovik, who is also one of the owners of the portal “Telegraf”, which is also part of MPM group, as well as “Alfa” TV is leaving the media business in Macedonia.
According to BIRN, Stanisavljeva has become the owner of “Internet Group Investment”, a company which until recently, was owned one-third by Veselin Jevrosimovik in the “Graphic Center”.
