After working his way up during the late 1970s and early 1980s in Politika publications such as Auto Svet, he got a sought-after job at NIN magazine, where he first wrote for the supplement on vehicles and eventually advanced to a position on the editorial board.
Following the 8th Session of the Serbian Communist League in September 1987, which was essentially the official date of Slobodan Milošević's ascent to power in Serbia, Tijanić lost all of his writing engagements in the Belgrade publications and was thus reduced to mostly writing in Croatian papers.