In the economy

Why do they need Izvestia?

June 9, 2011 Igor Yakovenko

Commenting on the convulsive agony of Izvestia, their new publisher Aram Gabrelyanov said that the newspaper will become the Russian analogue of Wall Street Jornal and “to break” Vedomosti with Kommersant. The reprise is worthy of the “Joke of the Week” nomination and stands on a par with the Medvedev statement on the creation of a world financial center in Moscow.

Ellochka-cereal competes with the daughter of Wanderbild.

Cherkizon competes with Wall Street.

Gabrelyanov calls on the battle of Murdok.

Fortunately, neither the daughter of Wanderbild, nor Wall Street, nor Murdok about these bloody battles is unknown. According to them, of course.

The story of Izvestia itself is not an event in the life of Russia, since this publication is absent in the last decade on the country's media map, is not a factor in public life.

This plot is interesting as an illustration that allows you to understand the structure of the Russian media space and its connection with the country's social and political fabric.

Let us return to the intention to turn Izvestia into Russian Wall Street Jornal.

Aram Gabrelyanov is today the most successful Russian manager in the field of print media, Anfan Territable of the Russian Print. Murdok, by the way, in the world of media has a similar reputation. Success and scandalous. Plus love for tabloids. On this, perhaps, analogies end.

The daily circulation of Wall Street Jornal, which is the leader of the American newspaper market, according to the ABC circulation bureau (not to be confused with the Russian dummy with the same abbreviation), is 2.117 million copies. When Murdok bought this newspaper in 2007, its circulation and then amounted to over 2 million copies. The declared circulation of Izvestia today is less than 140 thousand copies. Less than 100 thousand spreads in Russia. Even if this circulation is real, Izvestia and is not close to a national newspaper.

Is there any chance of Gabrelyanov to make Izvestia when preserving the declared development vector, with the current owner, which is the “national media group” Yuri Kovalchuk, and in the current Russian social and political realities?

I remind you that Gabrelyanov was about to “tear” the Komsomolskaya Pravda, which would be clear, but “Vedomosti” with the “Kommersant”. That is, the goal is to make a massive circulation and at the same time a respectable newspaper for smart and rich. The task in Russia today is unrealized, and in the situation of Gabrelevanov and on the basis of Izvestia, unrealized in the square. In today's Russia, the newspaper can be either mass and loyal or high -quality. The inability to combine both is inherent in the nature of the authorities and in the structure of Russian wealth.

The average income of the reader of Wall Street Jornal is about 230 thousand dollars a year, more than 19 thousand dollars a month. That is, it is a newspaper of millionaires. In such income, a person over 10 years can become a millionaire. About 8 million people with more than $ 1 million live in the USA (not counting real estate). People who have more than a million dollars of the so -called “Invested assets”, that is, free funds, in the USA in 2010 there were 2.87 million people. As you can see, the circulation of the leader of the American press correlates well with the number of "medium -covered" people in this country.

In Russia in 2010 there were 137 thousand dollar millionaires. So, if Izvestia want to become a newspaper for successful, rich and respectable people, then they have already reached the ceiling of their audience.

The problem is that in our country there are a lot of dollar billionaires, but few millionaires. The notorious problem is the lack of a middle class, the so -called The “two -humpal structure” of income: many beggars and super -rich and little normal.

There is a second objective problem with the magical transformation of Izvestia into an analogue of Wall Street Jornal. The subject of the overseas dreams of Gabrelyanov-Kovalchuk is a newspaper not only for the rich, but also for smart ones, that is, it should be a newspaper of influence, the subject of prestigious consumption and the source of quality analytics. The average volume of this publication is 98 pages. Izvestia has 8 stripes. The point, of course, is not in the amount of itself, but in the structure of the needs of the audience and the creative potential of the editorial office.

In the United States, an array of “smart” and the massif “successful”, of course, are far from identical, but are sufficiently intersecting sets. In our country, these are almost mutually isolated groups. Woe from the mind is a stable national tradition. If so smart, why is so poor?!

In a country where Seliger is a social elevator, mind and success are reliably divorced.

If an American millionaire is a person who earns his prosperity with his mind, labor and energy, then the Russian millionaire is most often an “entrepreneurial” official or an entrepreneur close to him. And if for the American millionaire financial and business news and analysts, which are the main content of Wall Street Jornal, this is a necessary condition for success, then for the Russian official millionaire a guarantee of prosperity is, first of all, building “correct” relations in the corridors of power. He does not need a brilliant expert analysis of the market, accessible to a million subscribers, except for it. That's who would have leaked exclusive information about public procurement and preparing personnel appointments to bread positions! But only individually, and not in a newspaper with a mass circulation.

Hence the third barrier separating our Ellochka from the overseas Vanderbildihi.

This is the quality of content and the reputation of the publication.

One of the reasons for the leadership of Wall Street Jornal is not just its independence from power, but also paradoxical pluralism within the publication itself. The editorial comments of this publication are conservatively conservative. This is their confrontation with the liberal editorial columns of New York Times. At the same time, Wall Street Jornal's news strips have a clearly expressed liberal vector. This internal-editing “confrontation” creates the “volume” of the newspaper, gives the reader confidence in its non -angigence, in the absence of service of someone’s political interests.

The Izvestia newspaper, which has been the actual information sponsor of United Russia for the past few years, drifts towards the party newspaper, which should be on the comet of this party. These last few years have destroyed the brand of the newspaper. This brand, the audience and reputation of the newspaper with a train have been drawn since Soviet times. They were created by personalities who had the most possible level of autonomy from the authorities: the chief editors of the newspaper Bukharin and Adjube in the Soviet years, Golembovsky - to the post -Soviet ones. (This paradoxical possibility - being in the very core of power, is autonomized from it - exists in all society, but in Soviet subcivation has become one of the ways to exist a whole layer of the so -called “Soviet party intelligentsia.”) The journalistic autonomy of Izvestia was ensured by the names of Agranovsky, Bovin, Lacis. There is nothing similar in the current Izvestia.

The Putin decade has sharply narrowed the level of this autonomy even compared to the Soviet period. Since the extremely narrow corridor of the possibilities of combining professional journalism and commercial success has now been added, the condition of which is the mandatory loyalty of the authorities. The unsuccessful attempts of Mikhail Kozhokin and especially Raf Shakirov are indicative to solve this problem in Izvestia. Both attempts with a bang failed. The rest of the main edges did not try to autonomize, initially playing according to the rules of the new owners.

The Putin regime leaves a choice for the journalist: if you want to write professionally and for smart ones, go to the “new” or in The New Times, where there will never be advertising income. If you want to engage in a media business - do a tabloid or gloss, or stupidly serve power. You can, however, hide into a segmented niche, as in the Soviet years they clogged into boiler rooms ...

Why, in this case, Izvestia Kovalchuk and Gabrelyanov?

Talking about the electoral resource of Izvestia is not even witty. The National Media Group Kovalchuk owns three federal television channels and three circulation newspapers, and even the Life News information factory, which has a chance to become a content manufacturer for the entire federal TV of Russia. Against this background, Izvestia is not even a dust. Moreover, not the media are responsible for the results of the elections today, but the Ministry of Justice, who selects the participants, and Churov, who determines the winners.

Another vivisection produced over Izvestia has three reasons for their new owners.

Rezon is the first - momentary benefit. The newspaper is stupid and banal unprofitable. 30% of its "income" is leasing the main part of huge areas on Pushkinskaya. The new owner quite rightly decided that leasing real estate does not require journalistic education, and licking the ass of power is not necessarily in the center of Moscow. So to the freedom of the press, everything that happens has definitely nothing to do.

To inflate the newspaper’s advertising budget with a recognizable brand for Gabrelyanov’s task is quite solved. Having in one pocket of Kovalchuk the advertising monopolist “Video Internet”, and in the other, Izvestia, to ensure the break -in the newspaper - not by Newton's bin and for the manager two orders of order below Gabrelyanov.

The second reason belongs to the medium -term strategy. Of course, there will be no elections in the coming years. But this does not mean that according to the results of pseudo-elections, heroes-winners will not be announced, who can apply for quite real awards. And here it is important to have time to stake the maximum area of ​​the post -assembled premium site. It doesn’t matter that everyone will decide the Ministry of Justice and Churov. To bring to the pre -election “battle” a large army and show the main voter whose contribution to the victory was more weighty: Gazprom with his NTV or Kovalchuk with his first, fifth, etc. etc. And the Izvestia through the comma will be quite good here. And how to convert administrative-political capital into tangible earthly joys, the new owners of the Izvestia do not need to be taught. I, I, are inappropriate, even write about this awkward.

The third reason applies to the long -term strategy. The main voter and his environment are making plans to own the country until the end of their lives, that is, another 20-30 years. The redistribution of the media market, as a result of which the maximum number of media resources is concentrated in the hands of people devoted to the chief voter, apparently, in their opinion, is a guarantee against the oscillation of public moods. They, apparently, sincerely believe that the dummier can come to life, and the scarecrow of the Izvestia, which has long turned this newspaper, can jump up and run somewhere. It seems to me that they believe in it, because they are convinced that everything can be decided by money and fear. At least Gabrelyanov managed to convince Kovalchuk of this, and Kovalchuk - Putin.

After all, Ellochka Schukin also convinced herself that the chinchilla stole, sewn from the Russian hare, killed in the Tula province, is an adequate analogue of the luxurious clothes of the overseas billionaire.

After the “reorganization”, Izvestia’s model became an exact copy of the Wall Street Jornal mod.

Interestingly, they really think that if one of them is to make up under Einstein, they will be able to commit a revolution in physics?

Photo by RIA Novosti