Two years after Feral Tribune became history, another icon of Croatian indepedent journalism is going down. And, unlike Feral, which arguably never had large popular following, this one had much better credentials as Croatian "beacon of democracy". Few Croatian institutions brought 120.000 men to the streets (argubaly the greatest public protest in Croatian history) like Radio 101 did in November 1996.
Yet, for all of its glory and heroism, Radio 101, just like so many heroes of "interesting times", had trouble adapting to new, more banal and mundane democracy. Most of the informed people pointed towards large scale financial mismanagement, allegedly by very heroes who bulit their reputations on Glorious November 1996.
In many ways what happened to Radio 101 is not very different from what is happening with Croatia.Heroically and "gloriously" won freedom is slowly and unceremoniously wasted away due to corruption, greed and incompetence.
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