Our Editor-in-chief Karol Ježík died yesterday shortly after noon at a Clinic of Anesthesiology and Intensive Medicine of the Teaching Hospital of Academician L. Dérer in Bratislava. His death was the result of a head injury sustained on the night of December 7, after the concert of singer Pavol Hammel, celebrating his anniversary, in the House of Culture Mirror Grove (Zrkadlový háj) in Petržalka. He was driven to a nearby Hospital of St. Cyril and Methodius and sent home without being X-rayed. After several hours, Karol Ježík became unconscious. Doctors who later examined him in a Teaching Hospital in Mickiewiczova Street found a head injury and drove him to a Neuro-surgical Department of the Hospital of Academician L. Dérer in Kramáre, where he was operated in the early hours of December 8. He never came round from coma again. For a week, his family, all editors, friends, acquaintancies and even readers hoped that his strong personality and spirit will win even in this trial as he was used to. This struggle, however, was too hard for his work-worn body. His spirit was strong, yet the body failed. He was 45 years and 12 days old.

Karol Ježík was a born journalist, his father was a sports correspondent of many Slovak dailies and he himself started to work as an external correspondent of the Czechoslovak Press Agency, where he was later employed. In the years 1974-1978, he studied in Bratislava and later worked as sports journalist. Since November 1989, he worked first as a vice editor-in-chief and later as editor-in-chief of Smena, the daily of the Slovak Union of Youth. On January 3, 1993, he had been fired after a directive ministerial decision and with him, most of the journalistst from Smena left. As soon as January 14, 1993, they started to publish an independent daily SME na…(literally - WE ARE on…- means on Monday, etc.). In 1995, after a contract with the daily and weekly Smena, it started to appear as a joint daily named SME/Smena. In 1996, after an attempt by the then-government to ruin the newspaper by refusing to print it, Karol Ježík together with the managing director of SME Alexej Fulmek and the whole staff built up their own printing hall with a rotary press, later adding a second one in Košice. He was married and had one daughter.