Sme

Sme is the leading liberal daily in Slovakia. It originated from the newspaper Smena, which was the organ of the Youth Association in socialist times. Sme was widely seen as the mouthpiece of the opposition under the governments of Vladimír Mečiar (1990-1998) and Robert Fico (2012-2018). After German co-owner Rheinische Post sold its shares in 2014 to the Slovak investment group Penta, which had been implicated in a major corruption scandal, the editor-in-chief and half of the editorial staff left the paper. These journalists then founded the independent newspaper Denník N, which was launched in January 2015. In 2021, Penta sold its shares to the current publisher, Petit Press, which also operates at the regional level with weekly newspapers across the country, and owns several magazines. Like many newspapers, Sme is struggling with a decline in its print circulation. Its texts are increasingly read in the online edition, some of the content of which is behind a paywall.