Ten N1 journalists resign, including Danica Vucenic
The former journalists accuse N1's new management of authoritarian rule, while the newsroom says it will carry on separately. Serbia votes on October 25.
Ten journalists at N1 television handed in their resignations on Friday, October 16, nine days before the parliamentary elections scheduled for October 25. They include Zaklina Tatalovic and Danica Vucenic. On Saturday, nine of them published a joint statement accusing the channel’s new management of authoritarian rule, while the N1 newsroom says it will continue on its own.
Who has left N1?
The weekly Vreme reported that ten N1 journalists had resigned. Nova.rs relayed the news on October 16 at 7:24 p.m. and added that the journalists confirmed it was true. The ten who resigned are:
- Adam Santovac
- Ana Novakovic
- Danica Vucenic
- Dimitrije Djuric
- Zaklina Tatalovic
- Zana Bulajic
- Ksenija Pavkov Strika
- Mia Bjelogrlic
- Sanja Kosovic
- Natasa Miljkovic
According to the N1 newsroom’s statement, Natasa Miljkovic left somewhat earlier than the other nine. The joint statement, published on October 17, is signed by the nine other names on the list, without hers. They told their employer about the termination of their employment contracts a day earlier, on October 16.
What reasons do the former journalists give?
They see the cause in a change of how the channel is run. They name Brent Sadler, executive director of programming at Adria News Network, Branislav Sovljanski, N1’s news director, and his deputy Vojislav Stevanovic as the new leadership. They also say N1 has recently come under the authority of the Alpak Capital fund. Under that leadership, they claim, they witnessed untruths, manipulation, censorship, public discrediting of colleagues, professional marginalization, changes of programme editors and a refusal to hold an open conversation about the problems.
The statement also answers the question of why they are leaving now. The former journalists stress that the most uncertain elections since N1 began are approaching, and that they do not want to lend legitimacy, by staying, to an editorial policy they cannot stand behind. They describe authoritarian rule as something they know from their own work:
“We recognized patterns of authoritarian rule that we, as journalists, have criticized for years, reporting on them whenever we saw them, not only in other media outlets but in society at large,” Adam Santovac, Ana Novakovic, Danica Vucenic, Dimitrije Djuric, Zaklina Tatalovic, Zana Bulajic, Ksenija Pavkov Strika, Mia Bjelogrlic and Sanja Kosovic said in the statement.
They focus most on the programme. The nine former journalists wrote that it creates an appearance of a conversation the newsroom no longer has:
“While genuine dialogue within the newsroom has all but been abolished, an illusion of it is being created on air. We do not want to take part in deceiving the audience with simulated debates, with the forced equating of opposing political actors and with the faking of normality, while ignoring the authorities’ long-standing and well-known attitude toward N1 and the broader social and political context in which we live and work.”
They explain that staying would no longer give them any chance to influence the programme. They add that waiting for someone else to deliver the “final blow” to N1 would mean denying what the leadership has already done:
“The new management has narrowed our space to such an extent that our staying could not influence how the programme will look in the coming days.”
What happened after September 11?
The same group of journalists issued a statement on September 11, 2026, objecting to how the newsroom was run and to the way employees were treated. They say nobody from the leadership invited them to talk afterward. Instead, they claim, Sovljanski publicly called them a “small group of people” who are “tearing down the newsroom.” Nova.rs asked Sovljanski for comment, but no reply arrived before its article was published. No response from Sovljanski, Sadler or Stevanovic to the claims in Saturday’s statement had been published at the time of writing.
The former journalists thanked the audience that trusted them for years and said they hoped to meet again soon.
How did the N1 newsroom respond?
The N1 newsroom issued its own statement as early as Friday evening. It calls the departure of ten colleagues voluntary and says it is concerned about the moment at which it is happening. It recalls twelve years of work: major investigative stories, numerous awards, a walk across the whole of Serbia and 24 hours of continuous live programming, which, the statement says, “practically no television similar to ours and with our capacities has done in history.”
The newsroom also addressed the absences from work:
“For months we have been forced to adapt to the fact that colleagues used every legal basis to be absent from work, which is their absolute right. Whether we will need someone to replace them, we will assess ourselves.”
The message closes with the words: “We are continuing separately, and that makes our fight harder, but we will not give up the professional and moral principles that have always guided us.” The newsroom also promised to meet the departing colleagues in the field.
Why does this matter beyond N1?
The departures come at a time when the newsroom of the Nova.rs portal is also in dispute with its management. In its own article, Nova.rs says its journalists are under pressure because they refuse to accept a new editor-in-chief imposed on them. As we reported on October 14, its journalists called a protest over a 48-hour deadline.
So far, two sides have gone public: the nine former journalists in their joint statement and the N1 newsroom in its own. The television’s management has not publicly addressed the specific claims.
