The Story of Vedomosti — A Russian Newspaper's Struggle for Independence

Source: The Moscow Times April 1, 2017

In the newsroom of Russia’s most respected business newspaper, editors and reporters are in a tense face-off with the paper’s owner Demyan Kudryavtsev (who also publishes The Moscow Times). He has just announced the name of their new editor-in-chief — an appointment that should reflect the paper’s editorial standards. But the mood is sour. 

Why bring in someone from outside the newsroom? Why someone from state television? What guarantee will there be of editorial independence? “Do you realize the first thing people will say?” one emotional staff member asks. “‘Vedomosti is going to be led by someone from Channel One!’” 

On the one hand, Tatyana Lysova’s successor was always going to face a newsroom of skepticism. The veteran editor spent more than 15 years meticulously curating its salmon-pink pages. To her staff and readers, she was a lone beacon of editorial independence in an increasingly hostile environment. 

To many, her replacement is a symbol of that hostility. Ilya Bulavinov was head of Internet broadcasting at Channel One, a television channel that many consider a prime example of Russian state media’s flexible attitude toward fact and fiction. 

His appointment might seem unusual for a paper that pioneered Russia’s transition to a free press after the fall of the Soviet Union. But it fits into a broader trend of recent ownership swaps, legal battles, and staff reshuffles at Russian media outlets—in what some see as a Kremlin campaign to silence critical voices. 

Not business as usual 

In a landscape where government and business interests held sway, it took an outsider to found Russia’s first independent business paper. 

Dutch entrepreneur Derk Sauer had come to Russia in the nineties and set up the successful publishing house Independent Media, which printed several titles, including The Moscow Times. 

Sauer saw another niche that needed filling: business journalism unbeholden to external interests.

With Russia’s hungry transition to capitalism came a new class of entrepreneurs who wanted to stay informed. Besides, Russia’s only other business newspaper, Kommersant, was broadening its coverage, leaving room for a hard business paper. Kommersant had also been bought by Boris Berezovsky, Russia’s kingpin oligarch, who, like many of his peers, saw the media as a tool of influence. 

Sauer named Vedomosti after Russia’s first newspaper, an 18th century bulletin founded by Peter the Great. “It had to sound as if it had been around for hundreds of years,” he says over a plate of fries at a central Moscow cafe. But the Moscow billboards announcing the paper’s launch in 1999 spoke of a sharp break with the past: “Any oligarch can buy our newspaper—at a kiosk.”

Rather than act as the Soviet regime’s propaganda tool or an oligarch’s playtoy, Vedomosti would promote a novel idea. “The message was: we’re independent,” says Sauer.