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It is extremely interesting to follow developments in the Russian press these days. Some newspapers and magazines have become simply horrifying to read. The reputable weekly Kommersant-Vlast, for example, recently published a wide-ranging forecast about the wars that will break out as a result of the economic crisis. It said Japan might join forces with India to attack China, or China and Pakistan might team up to attack India, or perhaps U.S. and Iranian forces will unite to overwhelm Saudi Arabia. The various combinations of allies and enemies in the report could easily confuse the reader, but the main idea was clear: A major war is inevitable. Moskovsky Komsomolets, meanwhile, ran a piece early last week about a possible conspiracy aimed at Prime Minister Vladimir Putin along the lines of the 1991 August putsch.
Amid all this gloom and doom, it is notable that leaders of the publishing business seem to all agree during internal discussions that a good way to combat the crisis is to avoid casting it in overly gloomy tones. Their position is that the world might be collapsing around us, but Russia is doing just fine.
However, if we consider the condition of the publishing business as a whole, things are not looking very good. Even the most optimistic assessments show advertising revenues have dropped 25 percent in comparison with the same period last year. Newspapers are reducing the number of pages and switching from color to black and white. For publishers who borrowed in dollars before the devaluation of the ruble, even thinking about the crisis has become a major headache.
Yet, in the midst of all the bad news, there are many stories of publications not only keeping their heads above water but of making real breakthroughs in quality. In January, the Gorodskiye Vesti newspaper in Revda in the Sverdlovsk region began publishing a paper in the neighboring city of Pervouralsky. That would have been a significant accomplishment even during times of economic boom, but to have seized the market in a city twice the size of Revda during the crisis is a signal achievement.
The company Novosti Regionov, created on the basis of the popular Tula weekly newspaper Sloboda, has attracted the major German publisher WAZ-Media Group as an investor. Since March 2008, the company has launched five new publications in regional capitals, the most recent in Saratov last month. Novosti Regionov plans to expand operations to 30 more cities.
The Altapress holding in Barnaul has combined the editorial boards of its 12 regional publications into a single team and launched a daily online version of its newspaper. In fact, it was the Altapress.ru web site that first published photos revealing that the passengers of the Mi-171 helicopter that crashed in the Altai Mountains in January, killing the president's envoy to the State Duma, were illegally hunting for endangered argali sheep.
The Media 3 holding, which uses the latest printing technologies and owns the Trud and Argumenty i Fakty newspapers, among others, will be moving to better premises this month. The print run of the weekly Trud-7 has increased by 40 percent compared to the same period last year, according to a report by the Print Distributors Association. What's more, the print runs of some leading newspapers and magazines are on the rise.
Of course, for every success story there are even more stories of publications closing their doors and laying off staff. But that is the purpose of a crisis -- to let only the strongest survive. Stay tuned to see who survives the apocalypse. These will be the success stories of the future. That is, as long as there are no major wars.
Alexei Pankin is the editor of IFRA-GIPP Magazine for publishing business professionals.
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