He stood in front of the smouldering parliament. His eyes were eating the words of the newspaper. People stopped and stared. Politika newspaper! The mouthpiece of the Milosevic regime - its propaganda fortress - carried the banner headline: "Serbia on the Road to Democracy".
Only those who have lived in Yugoslavia can understand what that Politika headline represented. Politika was the paper that spoke of the "aggressor NATO countries". It cited official descriptions of the students in the resistance movement Otpor as "traitors" and "terrorists".
For many pensioners and Socialist party stalwarts it portrayed the world according to Slobodan Milosevic. The opposition didn't exist in Politika, except when someone described them as "NATO spies" or "foreign agents".
But yesterday morning all of that changed. How did he feel, this man with his priceless copy of Politika? "I feel free," he said. "There are tears in my eyes as I read it."
Everyone wanted to buy their copy and keep it. People stopped to ask those carrying the paper where they could buy theirs. They were trophies of the revolution, like pieces of the Berlin Wall. "'I like selling these newspapers today," said the man at the kiosk. "Look, they are pictures of happy people."
The story behind those changed headlines is one of journalistic courage. Yesterday, under the glass chandelier of the magnificent 17-floor building there were Otpor posters across the glass-sided walls - except the one that someone smashed.
The stand-in editor-in-chief, Vojin Partonic, was one of 62 employees who signed a petition calling for the election committee to recognise the presidential victory of Vojislav Kostunica.
Then, just two days before the people claimed that victory on the streets of Belgrade, the same 62 signed a strike petition and turned up for work - but refused to do any.
"I was against Slobodan Milosevic and those sorts of politicians from his first day - September 24th, 1987," declares Mr Partonic. Up to 1993, he was able to work within the publishing house on an international edition of Politika that caused him no dilemmas.
When it shut down, he was transferred to the Politika main newspaper. "From that time, I started an internal fight against the editorial policy in Politika and the top of this fight was yesterday," he says.
He was moved from his job in the foreign policy section to one in financial markets, where he would not have to deal directly with regime political news. There were five others who suffered similar moves because of their views, he says.
Then on Thursday everything changed. When he came to work there were 100 police special forces in the building with guns, bullet-proof vests and camouflage gear. "They were there to protect Politika director Hazdi Dragan Antic," he said.
Mr Antic is an intimate friend of the Milosevic family.
It was a turbulent day. According to an article in yesterday's new-style Politika, a courier was assaulted after destroying a notice forbidding a public meeting to discuss a general strike at the paper.
When Mr Antic gave the courier this notice, he was so angry he ripped it up and stamped on it. So he was pulled by two bodyguards into a side room and beaten.
Mr Partonic says there was a difficult atmosphere throughout the day as the revolution raged outside. Aside from the strikers, the remainder of the journalists worked as normal.
"Then our chief came and told us at 7.00 pm to leave the building and we all went out by the back door."
Mr Antic went out with several police and was driven away in their van. The 62 went for a drink nearby, then returned to bring out the new Politika - with its celebration of democracy.