How many free media outlets are left in Russia? The kind that write about politics the way they see fit, aren’t afraid to tackle any subject, name any names, and at the same time are fully “real” media outlets—with a print edition, subscription options, and so on. I won’t make my own list so no one gets offended. Try making yours—I seriously doubt you’ll need more than one hand to count them. That’s terribly sad, because on the one hand we’ve entered the age of “new media,” and the press has been given amazing new opportunities to communicate with readers and compete. But on the other hand, we can see that the Kremlin riffraff has had little trouble cutting off the oxygen—advertising and subscriptions—to all “traditional” media and bringing them under control. And there’s no need for any special kind of totalitarianism—just send the tax authorities after anyone who places ads in a “bad” newspaper or magazine, and then make a polite call to the editor-in-chief asking them not to publish any more material “that runs counter to Russia’s interests.” A complete shift to the internet does not solve the problem: the audiences for a print publication and a website are completely different, and abandoning the “hard copy” simply means losing readers. And of course we all want people who do not use the internet to read news to still receive quality information in their print publications. Investigative journalism simply cannot be paid for through website advertising. It is expensive and inherently unprofitable. You can cite The Guardian and other newspapers, but I know this perfectly well myself: I have one of the most widely read blogs in Russian, but even if I plaster my entire LiveJournal with ads, it still would not cover the cost of the Anti-Corruption Foundation’s investigations, which exists only because you pay for it to exist. What’s needed is a fundamentally new model of coexistence between publications willing to produce quality journalism—including investigative reporting—and an audience that wants that kind of journalism. Apparently the secret of that coexistence can be summed up in a statement shocking in its novelty: information must be paid for. Many publications have already moved to fully paid subscriptions (try reading anything for free on the FT website), and many more will. Russia has already seen quite a few curious, useful, and worthwhile experiments in switching to mandatory or voluntary subscriptions. But the most impressive experiment is being carried out by The New Times.
They are not just answering the question: how are you going to fund investigative journalism? They have decided to answer another question that is highly relevant in Russia: how can you guarantee your independence in the future? What if we’re just financing someone’s business, and tomorrow a new owner comes in? The point is that right now there is no single person who can say: The New Times belongs to me. Here, read the editor-in-chief’s letter. I have seen the documents myself and can confirm this: the trademark “The New Times,” the publication’s archive, and everything else that constitutes the core value of the outlet are now being transferred to a specially created nonprofit foundation. The policy of that nonprofit foundation is determined by its board of trustees. It currently includes Boris Zimin, Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, Timothy Colton (a Harvard professor), Irena Lesnevskaya, and probably other people of the same kind will join as well—people who, for me personally, completely remove any doubts about whether someone might be asking the editor-in-chief to publish something (or not publish something). This is important. In a sense, The New Times is becoming a public asset—a magazine that belongs to everyone and to no one. Now about money. Where to get it. The economics of publishing a print media outlet are astonishing; I had no idea: The New Times costs 100 to 115 rubles in Moscow kiosks, 147 rubles at BP gas stations, and 169 rubles or more at airports. Yet the wholesale price is 40 to 50 rubles. A subscription eliminates a very expensive middleman in the form of retail chains, but brings Russian Post into the scheme, and it takes 50% of the profit. A one-year subscription costs 4,200 rubles for 44 issues = 95.4 rubles per issue, of which the editorial staff receives the same 50 rubles. And those 50 rubles are divided up as follows: 28% taxes, 21% printing, and the rest goes to rent and maintaining the newsroom. Frankly speaking, this is not the kind of business that lets you live in luxury. But it is the kind of work all of us need: we want investigations like the famous “Kremlin Black Cashbox,” we want journalists to uncover an outrageously expensive apartment owned by deputy Irina Yarovaya, and we like reading a magazine whose editor-in-chief has been on the jury of the “European Pulitzer” for the second year running. The New Times website has 360,000 unique monthly users. If, taking into account the non-overlapping online and offline audiences, 10% of that number take out a subscription, the magazine will be able to live quite спокойно and write what it wants, to our benefit and delight. That seems like a realistic goal to me, and it makes sense to help the magazine achieve it (they already had 5,000 subscribers before this). All the more so because if they succeed, it will become an example and a model for many media outlets facing similar problems. And if they fail, we will get less of the information we need. Komsomolskaya Pravda (a mass-circulation pro-Kremlin tabloid) is not going to publish investigations for you. Unless, of course, it’s an investigation called "How Vladimir Putin Became the Kindest and Most Honest Man Without Stealing a Thing." The New Times subscription campaign page is here. You can subscribe yourself—or subscribe your parents, grandparents, or friends—very quickly and easily. You can support the subscription campaign with a special flyer—download it here. It is important to understand: this is not charity. It is a way of coexistence and mutual benefit. The magazine looks for information, we pay for it by subscribing ourselves and subscribing our grandmothers, the grandmothers sit on the phone retelling the magazine’s articles to their friends, and those friends vote against the Kremlin crooks in elections. That is a much more interesting life than this: the Kremlin crooks strangle all free media, pump propaganda through the zombie box (slang for television) to convince grandmothers to support them in elections, and then steal their pensions. Subscribe right now. Encourage your friends and relatives to subscribe.