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The crisis has apparently strengthened traditional Soviet journalistic practices. I came to this conclusion after speaking with participants at several recent national publishing conferences. "For decades, Komsomolskaya Pravda served up article after leaden article about Soviet officials meeting with other Soviet officials," reads the opening line of a New York Times article last year dedicated to the newspaper. I don't know how many issues of the "old Komsomolka" that journalist read. As for myself, I remember that Yury Shchekochikhin began working at KP in the early 1970s and later gained world recognition as a journalist. He was captain of the Scarlet Sail, a club for teens. Many of those teens crowded the KP corridors back then, all with exotic clothes and haircuts, and together with their equally exotic captain they published a monthly full-page article for their peers. This was significant because Komsomolskaya Pravda was the third-largest newspaper at the time. What's more, in the late 1960s, KP staffers organized a social movement opposing the construction of a polluting paper mill on Lake Baikal. Although the mill was built, their efforts did result in a toughening of environmental standards.
Of course, the insipid articles mentioned by The New York Times reporter were also part of this picture, but their presence did not negate the work of many honest reporters.
The best traditions of Soviet journalism have been maintained in the democratic era. As a jury member of the Andrei Sakharov Prize for journalism, I read hundreds of such works every year. But they have been marginalized. Countless newspapers have appeared that exist only to serve their owners -- new members of the pluralistic political elite, as well as both major and minor oligarchs. The market press has "yellowed." In fact, it is the very publications that cater to the "glamour" and "yellow journalism" markets that have suffered most from the crisis.
But Sergei Stroitelev, editor of the Gorod N newspaper in Rostov-on-Don and a participant in a conference of independent regional publishers held in May, said "publishers who receive their primary income from retail newspaper sales really have not suffered. They have experienced stable demand from tens of thousands of their publications' readers." Prominent in this category are those publications that exemplify the spirit of the old Komsomolskaya Pravda. One example is the Severnaya Nedelya publisher based in Severodvinsk that operates under the slogan "Publisher of good-natured newspapers." The company publishes more than a dozen newspapers and magazines and has a combined print run of some 2 million copies nationwide. "Our mission is to help our readers," said a journalist from Semeinaya Gazeta (Family Newspaper), a publication read by practically every household in Ioshkar-Ola, the capital of the republic of Marii-El with a population of 250,000. Meanwhile, the editor of the Avangard weekly from Novoanninsk in the Volgograd region said, "During the crisis, we have raised advertising rates several times with no decrease in the number of advertisers." Avangard has achieved a print run much higher than the local sales of national papers that are also distributed there.
In other words, the crisis has given a competitive advantage to publications that are tailored to the needs and interests of specific, often localized readerships. I am certain that the "Sovietization" -- in the best sense of the word -- of the contemporary Russian press is continuing. The academic Sakharov's dream of convergence -- the fusion of the best traits of socialism and capitalism -- might finally be coming true, at least in journalism.
Alexei Pankin is the editor of IFRA-GIPP Magazine for publishing business professionals.
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