The spiral of history is an amazing thing. Could we ever have imagined that in 2014 we’d be publishing some hellish proclamations, straight out of a history textbook (not that I’m claiming Chernyshevsky’s talent, of course). And yet here we are. Since Vedomosti has already written that Roskomnadzor refused to register our newspaper Popular Politics (what can you do), let me tell you more about it. First, a few words about whether it’s needed. I already knew it was, but as I wrote before, after spending time under house arrest and watching television closely, I became completely convinced that it is. To say that the idiot box is full of censorship and propaganda would be a massive understatement. Before, there was censorship, propaganda, and blacklists; now it’s absolute, one-hundred-percent lying. Not spin — just lies, the bastards, in every single word. The segment "Experts wonder why Navalny went to the CIA," which shocked me so much, doesn’t actually stand out all that much. Only the weather report occasionally resembles the truth. The news people would very much like to know is simply ignored. As if it doesn’t exist. For example, the whole country got its brain drilled with: "PUTIN IS FIGHTING CORRUPTION, THEY CAUGHT THE CORRUPT OFFICIAL SERDYUKOV." Remember those magnificent segments from our beloved little croaker:
http://youtu.be/BEiZ_sWmP4s But do the federal TV channels say that Serdyukov was amnestied? You won’t hear a word about that on the main channels. And so on — there are plenty of examples. It also became obvious during the Moscow elections that we needed a newspaper made specifically for an audience that does not use the internet at all. Roughly speaking, a newspaper for technologically unsavvy pensioners whose children and grandchildren aren’t interested in politics and therefore can’t enlighten them. And most importantly, we need a channel for distributing information about the results of our investigations. At the same time, we understood: A newspaper is a complicated, professional undertaking. The ACF (Anti-Corruption Foundation) was not created to publish newspapers. We don’t know how to make them, and we’re not especially eager to. We’re doing it because it has to be done. We don’t have the resources to maintain a full-fledged editorial staff, etc. We will never be able to compete with professional media outlets on timeliness. So we came to an obvious conclusion: this has to be a newspaper that carries information from the internet to the offline world. In other words, we simply take stories that "blew up" online and were completely censored out of the idiot box. We rewrite them in "plain language" and put them in the paper. The Chechen deputy whose gold pistol falls out of his pocket was a huge online hit for three days. Not a word on TV. The theft surrounding the Olympics was discussed online for months, but got not a second on television. The famous "receipt from the Kremlin cafeteria." Deputies’ salaries. And then there’s ACF’s investigation into United Russia lawmakers’ dachas — not only was it shown nowhere, it became the final reason behind the decision to attack TV Rain (an independent Russian TV channel). And so on and so forth. So we take material that is guaranteed to interest people, spend minimal effort adapting it, and get a newspaper that is interesting to a pensioner and not tied to any particular date. If a pensioner didn’t know before that Serdyukov had been amnestied, it will still be interesting to learn in February or in May. So, here is the first issue, although some people have already seen it — it has already been distributed. For example, Vedomosti itself learned about the existence of Popular Politics after one of its reporters found the paper in his mailbox. You can download and read it here: Newspaper in PDF You can get a general idea from this:
Obviously, there are shortcomings and mistakes. We see them ourselves and we’ll fix them. Let’s proceed from the idea that content matters more than perfect execution, which we won’t be able to achieve anyway — we’re not an editorial office. A bit about the "behind the scenes" of the process: At first, we took the simplest route and used the layout of the campaign newspaper Navalny as our basis. Two issues of the newspaper People’s Deputy were produced from it. We didn’t like the result. The paper came out dull both in layout and in the writing. What worked well during an election campaign turned out not to be very useful in "peacetime." We decided to change the format of the publication. As our model, we chose British mid-market tabloids: big photos, huge headlines, all that stuff. Why British rather than Russian? Because they have a harder fight for readers — there are many newspapers there, and they’ve developed lots of techniques for getting someone to open a paper and read it cover to cover. Photos of tabloid covers We called our genre a political tabloid. Popular Politics performs the function Russian tabloids do not: it tells readers about the luxurious lifestyles of officials and civil servants that do not match their declared incomes. A paper like Zhizn or Komsomolka (Komsomolskaya Pravda) has every opportunity to send a paraglider over Volodin’s or Shuvalov’s dacha. Why they don’t do it is a rhetorical question. We spent a long time choosing a name for Popular Politics. We wanted something unusual, something that reflected us, and something that would make a reader want to open the paper. Among the options were, for example: South Park Weekly Prophet This Headline Is on Fire Gloomy Tabloid Brazen Newspaper Tractor Bitter Truth Politota Tin-Foil Hat Truth-Chopper Sharp and Colorful An Honest Lifestyle In the shortlist, three names remained: Popular Politics, Tractor, and Brazen Newspaper. We liked the first for its neutrality, the second for its unusualness, and the third because it conveyed the essence of the publication best. We argued for several days over which one to keep, and in the end settled on the neutral Popular Politics. For the NGO under which the editorial office is registered, we chose the name Positive Agenda, and now we’re eagerly awaiting the headline: "In Russia, Positive Agenda has been declared a foreign agent." Another possible NGO name was Spiritual Bonds (a sarcastic reference to a popular conservative Russian slogan). Fun facts: For the first issue, we gathered four times more material than ultimately fit into the paper (and there was still a complaint that the newspaper contained too much information). The editorial team’s favorite piece was the article about the Olympic contractor with Yefim Basin’s coat of arms. Of course, by now you’re already asking: making a newspaper is easy enough. But how do you print and distribute it — and with what money? Here we decided to use the experience we had already built up with the newspaper "For Navalny":
The campaign headquarters makes the newspaper and gives the finished PDF layout to anyone who wants it. Supporters in the regions open Yandex Money wallets and pool money for printing and distribution. We help promote those Yandex wallets. Local activists find a print shop themselves, print the paper, and hire professional distributors. If someone wants to insert material on local issues, we welcome that. You can throw out any of our material and put in your own. We’ll help with the layout. As you can see here, quite a lot of cities supported the initiative last time. There were many recommendations to make the newspaper color, even if that made it more expensive. We took that into account. Obviously, in some places it’s difficult. Some copies get confiscated. In some places distributors are intimidated. But returning to Chernyshevsky, let’s remember that he was sent to penal labor for proclamations. So our problems are less problems than adventures. We managed the printing and distribution of the first issue ourselves, using funds from those who want to run for the Moscow City Duma. A newspaper like this will be useful to them too. So far, the print run has been 450,000 copies at 1.4 rubles per copy. Fun facts: From experience, we knew that pressure could be put on the print shops we use, so we worked through a broker and no one at the Foundation knew the names or addresses of the print shops. The print shops strongly asked us to remove the name "Alexei Navalny" from the masthead, but at the last moment they gave in and left the layout unchanged. The ACF was given a single bundle, which was kept under lock and key until distribution was complete.
Distribution Distribution took place in 21 Moscow districts, at a cost of 0.65 to 0.7 rubles per copy. List of districts Arbat, Presnensky, Tagansky, Tverskoy, Khamovniki, Aeroport, Voykovsky, Sokol, Khoroshyovsky, Losinoostrovsky, Veshnyaki, Kosino-Ukhtomsky, Novokosino, Perovo, Maryino, Severnoye Tushino, Danilovsky, Krylatskoye, Donskoy, Gagarinsky, Zyuzino, We’re trying to make distribution as comprehensive as possible, but obviously in Moscow it’s impossible to do that 100%. Polling. We are conducting a panel study. Volunteers carried out a survey before the newspaper was distributed in randomly selected apartment buildings in order to assess awareness of various cases in different areas of public life. A second survey is planned after distribution of the newspaper. For the study, we selected districts with the highest levels of support for the current authorities. So soon we’ll have some data on whether people noticed the newspaper and remembered anything that was written in it. If you’re ready to take part in the newspaper project in your city, we’d be very glad — write to us here: gazeta@fbk.info. We want to make this project as broad, universal, and decentralized as possible. Because the Kremlin riffraff seem to think that if they block LiveJournal, they’ve immediately shut everyone up. Not going to happen. P.S. Huge thanks to all the ACF staff who worked on the project. And especially to our secret volunteer, who did all the layout completely free of charge out of conviction. Secret volunteer — you’re a hero. During Alexei Navalny’s house arrest, his blog is run by Yulia Navalnaya and ACF staff.