Russia's RBC news outlet will lose its 19th and 20th employees in two months on Sunday, as deputy editor Irina Malkova and newspaper editor-in-chief Petra Mironenko leave the company, the Vedomosti newspaper reported Friday.
Following the announcement of the dismissal of RBC editor-in-chief Yelizaveta Osetinskaya, newspaper editor Maxim Solus, and web editor Roman Badanin in May, there has been a mass exodus of employees from the news outlet.
Employees who handed in their resignations said they would leave after June 30, but RBC CEO Nikolai Molibog convinced several members of staff to stay on for a few more weeks until new bosses came in.
Now, the last remaining employees of that group are bowing out of the company, leaving some departments completely empty. There are now no editors for the finance and media sections, and on Monday there will not be a single member of staff for the RBC newspaper.
According to Malkova and Mirinenko, more than half of the employees who have departed since May were key members of staff, including 8 deputy editors, 4 department heads, and one special correspondent.
RBC announced last week that Yelizaveta Golikova and Igor Trosnikov, both recruited from state-run news agency TASS, would take over as a joint editorial team. Golikova's first day at the outlet was yesterday.
Despite the mass exit, Trosnikov believes the worst is over, saying, “the problem is solved. The editors will continue to work and produce news, and the newspaper will live on,” Vedomosti reported.
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