Company · Newspaper Publishing

Magyar Szó Hungarian-Language Daily

Magyar Szó (lit. Hungarian Word) is a Hungarian-language daily newspaper published in Novi Sad/Újvidék, Vojvodina/Vajdaság, Serbia. It was founded in 1944 to serve the information needs of about half a million ethnic Hungarians in what was then Yugoslavia. During the Cold War, it was considered the freest Hungarian-language daily newspaper in the world. The Forum Publishing House created around Magyar Szó was one of the top five companies in the news and printing industry in all of Yugoslavia. It was likely the first Hungarian-language newspaper in the world that computerized its editorial operations in the early 1980s. After the democratization of Hungary in 1989, newspapers there became free and with Western investment, overshadowed Magyar Szó. Due to the collapse of Yugoslavia in 1991, large numbers of the Hungarian minority emigrated and the Hungarian media in Vojvodina (Serbia) now focuses on ethnic and minority issues. Magyar Szó has been able to maintain a relatively independent editorial policy despite its economic dependence on state and ethnic self-government support.