"Nova Makedonija", "Vecer" (published in Macedonian language) and "Flaka e Vlazerimit" (published in Albanian language) are the three daily newspapers that appeared in North Macedonia during the socialist period. The first daily newspaper in the Macedonian language is "Nova Makedonija", which was founded by a decision of the First Session of The Anti-fascist Assembly for the National Liberation of Macedonia (ASNOM) in 1944. A year later, "Flaka e Vlazerimit" began publication, while the "Vecer" newspaper was first published in 1963. All three newspapers were owned by the state-owned "News Publishing Company Nova Makedonija", which also published other specialized weekly and monthly papers.
The first independent daily newspaper "Republika" began its publication in 1991, but only lasted on the market for about a year.
The monopoly of the state-owned newspapers collapsed when the daily "Dnevnik" appeared, in 1996. It was founded by several journalists and had record circulations. It was shutdown in 2017 as the publishing house that owned it, "Media Print Makedonija", went bankrupt.
Together with "Dnevnik", the once popular media "Utrinski Vesnik" and "Vest" were also a part of the same media group. They, too, have ceased publication.
Today, there are a total of 21 print media registered in the country. Four of these are daily newspapers - "Nova Makedonija", "Vecer" and "Sloboden Pecat" published in Macedonian and "Koha" in Albanian.
The Media Ownership Monitor in North Macedonia database contains data for five print media - four daily newspapers and one weekly paper - "Fokus", based on the Register of Print Media Publishers of the Media Agency.
Three selection criteria were taken into account: that the print media should offer news content, for it to be published regularly and distributed nationally.
