Based in Belgrade, edited by Petar Luković, and "published in Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian and Montenegrin languages", E-novine has pro-Western, pro-EU editorial policy.
E-novine's claims its editorial policy is not aimed at objective and global journalism; it mostly publishes critiques and opinion pieces that scrutinize the day-to-day politics of former Yugoslav republics as well as wider trends within the respective countries' societies.
According to the website's About Us page, by the end of 2008, visits to the site increased dramatically and the number of visitors went up several hundred percent compared to the previous period with over a half of the new traffic coming from the ex-Yugoslav countries rather than Serbia itself.
[1] During late summer 2009 E-novine reportedly faced a shut-down due to financial problems, which the portal claimed were caused by "the pressure from the Serbian regime".
It began in sarcastic fashion, before turning serious, defending himself by stating that a paid political ad doesn't constitute the portal's editorial policy switch toward supporting SNS.
Initially, the portal reunited the former staff of Feral Tribune from Split: Heni Erceg, Viktor Ivančić, Boris Dežulović and Predrag Lucić [sr].
[26] Writing in September 2009, Serbia-based journalist Branka Mihajlović of the United States Congress funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty referred to E-novine's editor-in-chief Luković as being "adored in the rest of the former Yugoslavia as much as he is despised in Serbia" while calling the portal a "specific project whose readers are most likely the same people who during Yugoslav Wars waited for Vreme each Friday to wipe down their soul or who bought Feral Tribune when such an act was life-threatening".
[28] He then pointed out E-novine's 21 June 2009 piece headlined "Čik progovori mađarski u Srbiji" — about two men who allege to have been approached and assaulted in a Novi Sad city transit bus by a random passenger, allegedly just for having spoken Hungarian during the ride[29] — while specifically focusing on the piece's comment section featuring published reader reaction such as: "You don't fight Serbs with words, you fight them with weapons.
Strahinja Bogdanović accused E-novine in June 2009 of “vulgarity” and “profane insults”, stating they are in the service of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which is usually spared their criticism.
[31] On the other hand, LDP member Nenad Prokić made veiled accusations that internet portals E-novine and Pescanik caused the party to perform poorly at the local elections in the Belgrade municipality of Voždovac.
[32] In May 2012, after himself being targeted in multiple insulting write-ups on the portal, prominent Serbian leftist columnist Teofil Pančić referred to E-novine as the Kurir of 'Other Serbia', a launchpad for cyber-lynching, and an outlet that has long ago degenerated into a specific kind of aggressive tabloid.
The assassination technique is always the same: first, a junior member of their newsroom grabs hold of you, covers you in feces, and throws you into a frying pan to crackle in cooking oil before leaving you to the anonymous cyber lynch-mob in the comments section that then dismembers you like rats eating a cadaver".
[33] The comments section was being policed by the e-zine's director/commissar, B. Jelic, whose function was not only to delete "ideologically unacceptable" posts but also those that in a slightest way criticised Petar Lukovic or e-novine per se.
Mr. Jelic did not refrain from falsifying the readers' statements (e.g., deleting certain words or phrases and thus changing the meaning of the post) in order to convince the readership that a commenter had stepped over the line of his interpretation of political correctness or good taste.