AMERISKA DOMOVINA (American Home), traces its lineage back to the origins of the city's SLOVENE press. It was preceded by Narodna Beseda, a semimonthly established 11 Feb. 1899 and later renamed Nova Domovina. Although that venture went out of business on 25 Apr. 1908, Louis Pirc, one of the owners, replaced it on 5 June 1908 with a weekly named Amerika, which became Ameriska Domovina in Feb. 1919 and began daily publication on 3 Aug. 1929. In contrast to the freethinking daily ENAKOPRAVNOST, Ameriska Domovina has been strongly Catholic throughout its existence. Early issues gave recently arrived immigrants such practical advice as how to determine their house addresses. Politically, the paper favored the Democratic Party nationally and opposed the spread of fascism abroad. By the 1930s, Pirc had acquired a partner, Jas. Debevec, who edited the paper and eventually became its owner. One of the few Slovenian newspapers to oppose the partisan party in Yugoslavia during World War II, Ameriska Domovina maintained a staunch anti-Communist position afterward and leaned more toward the Republican Party. Following Debevec's death in the early 1950s, control of the paper passed to his son, Jas. V. Debevec, and his wife. Retrenchment began in the late 1960s, as Ameriska Domovina cut its publication schedule back to a weekly. Addition of a weekly page in English helped stabilize the paper in the 1980s, when its Slovenian section was edited by Rudolph M. Susel. In 1995 it was still published every Thursday from its home for over half a century at 6117 St. Clair Ave. In 2008, Ameriska Domovina ceased publication.
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