He began his journalism career in the mid-1970s at Duga,[1] a bi-weekly magazine re-launched a few years earlier in the early 1970s in Belgrade, Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

[1] Throughout the 1980s, Marić was able to secure interviews with a number of aging Yugoslav communists — a basis for his 1987 book Deca komunizma ("Children of Communism").

The book was a considerable commercial and critical success, and he soon got an invitation to speak at Yale, Harvard and Princeton.

[1] During this time, Duga journalist Dada Vujasinović died from a gunshot under suspicious circumstances (the death is officially described as suicide).

[1] Later in the 1990s, Marić was sacked from Duga, leading to a period during which he worked for and edited several publications, including most notably Profil, which he launched himself.