The staff of the NCL Media Group led by CEO Ivo Pukanic and Nacional Editor in Chief Sina Karli in front of the building at Vlaska Street No. 40Someone who has not worked in the newspaper industry cannot know what it means to issue a news magazine like Nacional 600 weeks in a row. I feel like laughing when my friends tell me its best that we meet Tuesday – because I am, as they say, more relaxed and free then that Nacional is off the presses. But the sweating just start then because a new issue faces you, a new 120-130 empty pages that need to be filled with relevant, exclusive and analytical texts, the content that sells the magazine. Of the founders of Nacional from the first issue, which hits newsstands on 23 November 1995, only Editor in Chief Sina Karli, Maroje Mihovilovic, Srecko Jurdana, Ida Sagovac, Tonko Vulic and myself still work at Nacional. We and some other colleagues pooled our funds then and invested it into a product that is today among Croatian strongest brand names. Those who believed in what they were doing and who were never for a moment narrow-minded stayed on. Those who believed can, today, 600 issues later, be proud of what they have built.

Nacional is today one of the top opinion makers in Croatia, read – according to research by top the most relevant agencies – by the most educated, most powerful and most influential people in Croatia. Nacional has a stable readership and is sold weekly in from 32,000 to 40,000 copies. The same research shows that one copy of Nacional is read by eight people, which means that Nacional is read by over a quarter million people in top positions who shape opinions and are decision makers in their milieus. Nacional is now, precisely on account of this target readership, one of the best marketing platforms for advertising and the promotion of other products.

Nacional plays a major social and political role. It is well known that few political options or individuals can succeed in the political arena without the support of Nacional. In the political sense Nacional has always supported all ideas rooted in the freedom to express opinions and the freedom of the press, anti-Fascism, and an adherence to the European cultural and political circle. The same is valid of the social and cultural scene, were we are fighting for complete freedom of expression and the absolute respect of all human rights.

Along with Nacional, the NCL Media Group, and its daughter company NCL Novosti, publish Extra, a successful magazine targeted to urban women, and Gameplay, the leading magazine for the gaming culture. Here too is the leading health magazine Zdrav život and the N Style periodical, issued as a Nacional supplement. From 1 June the NCL Media Group is launching a new magazine called Super Basketball, a specialised publication targeted to fans of the sport.

NEWS IN THE NATIONAL DISTRIBUTION has 12 editions printed in a record 690 thousand copiesPozega News was launched two weeks ago, the twelfth publication in the News family, the highest circulation newspaper not only in Croatia, but in all of south-eastern Europe, now printed in 690,000 copies, it is the only print media able to match all three TV stations combined as a marketing force. According to agency reports, every News issue in the national distribution is read by over 2 million people. Several additional editions are in the works so that a final number of 800,000 copies are expected by year's end, whereby News would in fact appear in every Croatian home.

The NCL Media Group has also had tremendous success with its www.nacional.hr Internet portal, which two week ago set a record of over 2 million hits in one day, putting it in the company of the leading portals in Croatia. According to the final report, the NCL Media Group closed last year with a turnover of 58 million kunas, and NCL Novosti with 28 million kunas of turnover, and with a profit of several million kunas, which numbers it among the few media houses in Croatia operating profitably.

After 600 issues of Nacional, all those creating in our group can be proud that today, on the day of the release of this jubilee issue, the reconstruction and widening of our building, housing all of the editorial boards and services, is completed. The technically most sophisticated news agency in the region, with the latest software and hardware, has grown in these 2000 square metres in the very heart of Zagreb. The entire building has, after the two-year reconstruction, been completely adapted for the challenges that contemporary medias will face in the coming twenty years. The entire construction, costing several million kunas, was financed by our own money, without a single kuna of loans, which speaks volumes of the company's financial stability. Significantly contributing to this was our partner VCP, a Vienna-based investment fund that holds a 25 percent stake in the company, which, through Gabriel Dielacher and his expertise in management and modern operations, helped a great deal in establishing the highest standards in the operations of the NCL Media Group. What we have not improved so far we will improve in the coming period. To achieve this we have engaged the services of one of the largest auditors in the world, the US firm of KPMG, that will, for the first time, carry out a complete audit of our entire operation and show us our omissions and our mistakes, the correction of which will next year allow us to achieve even better growth and profits. And in doing so we will secure that which is most important for a newspaper – financial independence, without which there is no free and independent journalism. And finally, I wish to thank all those who have had the courage and vision to help in the achievement of my dream – to create and strong and honest newspaper, that will outlive its founders and become one of the indispensable pillars of the new Croatia, its democracy and free press. I hope that we will again not disappoint you, our faithful readership, in the future, to whom this editorial board and myself are solely responsible.