Evening Internet: note 444 - the whole truth about vesti.ru

Among the readers' letters I received in the last few days, they abounded requests to devote a new release of the evening Internet to the events taking place in Israel . In my opinion, nothing happens there that it would not be provided for by the spirit and letter signed in September 1993 of the so-called Oslo-Vashington Agreements between the then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the famous international terrorist Yasir Arafat. According to these agreements, Israel was obliged to help the organization of the liberation of Palestine in the creation and weapons of his own army, for its subsequent use in the war against Israel. If the late Rabin and his now resilient of his colleague of Peres really believed that receiving weapons would make one of the largest terrorist organizations of the modern world with a stronghold of peace, then it is difficult to understand what this illusion was based on. Be that as it may, today it is dispelled. OOP uses weapons obtained from Israel for the only purpose for which you can use weapons: it shoots. At the same time, the goal reflected in the title of the organization is pursuing the release of Palestine from those who drank all the water in the tap.

That the situation will turn out exactly as she turned around, I personally predicted on the pages of the Russian daily newspaper today literally the day after the high -reaching parties on the lawn at the White House, the signed agreement with a handshake. The point here is not even what Palestinians are bloodthirsty , and which Israelis naive suckers (although this, of course, will not be taken from those or others). The problem is that the compilers of the Oslo -Vashington agreements, trying to sign the contract at all costs, left the "sweet" a number of interesting issues on which the compromise between the positions of Israel and the OOP was - and remained - in principle, unattainable. The solution to the resolution of these issues (read: the war due to the inability to agree) was postponed to the stage of “final settlement”, that is, for the future so distant that one could hope: either the ishak or the pads will die. In the 2000s, decisions were postponed by the division of Jerusalem, the liquidation of Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria (with the violent deportation of their entire population it is not clear where), the return of millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants to the limits of the present Israel and the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state with its own army, aviation and fleet, which, in principle, will not, in principle, will not have No other opponent, except the Israelis.

2000, however, has come, although Rabin did not live to see him. There are still no agreements on Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, settlements and Palestinian state, despite all the long seats in the Camp David . And Arafat has no choice but “continuing the policy by other means”, that is, jihad in the name of “liberation of Palestine”. What he was safe and did. Ehud Barak, who came to power due to promises to avoid such a development of events, is forced to present the ultimatum to Arafat and send troops to battle on the eve of the court day. What next? Shooting and blood, blood and shooting are the inevitable consequences of the notorious peaceful process. Those who promised that he would develop differently are invited if the terrible fruits of their delusions are not recognized, then at least to be silent out of decency. If Israel survives this war, then I hope that its future leaders will get common sense to give the culprits of the current bloodshed to explain their actions before the tribunal. However, historical experience suggests that this will never happen. There was no stupidity that would not get away with the Israeli leaders, whether it was the organization of explosions in Cairo or the 1973 war almost lost due to the head of intelligence. For which Israel is still paying, how Russia pays for unremarking to part with its communist past.

My friend and co -author, the Israeli journalist and writer Arkan Kariv, recently published his new novel “ Translator ” in the library of Maxim Moshkov (see also contents ). What is this book about? About the life of Russians in Israel, about the hardships of the reservoir of the army, about the fate of the Nabokov heroes in new circumstances, about Moscow and Muscovites? Each reader is free to find something in this book, or just enjoy the solid Russian prose, composed without looking at Tarantino and without ambitions on the same tray with Marinina, which has recently succeeded in other domestic writers of pseudo-intellectual commercial prose ... just a good, intelligible Russian text, which is not my time in recent years to drop it.

I will take advantage of the case and make clarity to the fate of the online publication Vesti.ru , where by October 9 some inevitable changes in the fate were raided - my departure from the post of chief editor and coming to the new team. Moreover, “ Moscow News ” has already managed to launch their version of the changes that take place there, based, alas, not even on a misunderstanding, but on the completely conscious desilation of a journalist (and/or editorial office) to distort the real situation for the sake of political conjuncture.

This is how the reason for the permutation in Vesti.ru is described on the pages of MN:

Most of the media created by the FEP OM were ideologically engaged. At some point, especially after the history with Kursk and the appearance on the Vesti.ru page, the articles “ sailed ”, where the Kremlin was sharply criticized, FEP leaders remembered who the publication belongs and decided to restore order. ”

This version, of course, is very convenient for anyone who is inclined to find a political background at the heart of each natural phenomenon, and sees his own function in opening this background. However, in relation to permutations in the newspaper Vesti.ru, such an explanation does not withstand the most superficial actual verification (which the INC correspondent was not too lazy, but it considered it possible to conceal from the reader).

The fact is that the fundamental decision to change the concept of Vesti.ru was agreed between me, the editorial team and the FEP in June 2000 , according to the results of a two -month “brainstorming” on the topic of the newspaper’s post -collection fate. Two options were considered; The first of them provided for the transformation of Veste.ru into a completely apolitical entertaining publication, with the rejection of the “ Anger of the Day ” section and the strengthening of sections devoted to humor, leisure, culture, computers, etc. (The option provided for the release of FEP from the founders, or its transformation into a junior shareholder, as happened immediately after the elections in tape.ru ). According to the second scenario, Vesti.ru should have been converted to a socio-political publication on the contrary, in which, obviously, the former team could no longer fully meet the tasks and format of the newspaper. In both cases, it was about my departure from the post of editor -in -chief simply because my workload in other projects did not allow the continuing to continue.

The reason, which caused the need for such a difficult choice, was not in the frantic commercial success of the apopolytic Vesti.ru (which the author of the article in the MN directly hints), but exactly the opposite - in the absence of a clear business strategy, which, in turn, was associated with the fall of the audience of the hybrid period and with the lack of prospects for its growth. This problem could be solved either by strengthening the entertainment component (obviously more popular than political news, and more attractive for a third -party commercial investor), or by focusing on the audience that is exclusively interested in politics, as is done, for example, in a very popular fack edition of Meda .

What way to go to the new Vesti.ru - FEP asked me about it, and I - my employees. First of all, the option was worked out with the transformation of a hybrid newspaper into a completely apolitical. It was not difficult enough for investors who were interested in such restructuring investors, but all of them put forward the same requirement: the basis for their entry into the project should have been an absolutely clear, time-painted program for the “restructuring” of the newspaper, and a business plan based on this program. Both that, and another, it was proposed to develop the existing edition of the newspaper. I was not ready to participate in this process because I was not going to work in the new newspaper (and for the same reason for the lack of time), and FEP - simply because he does not think of a player in the market of entertainment resources. Therefore, the development of a plan for the transformation of Vestei.ru into an apolitical publication was entrusted to the staff of the editorial staff. Unfortunately, they have not coped with this task. I don’t blame them for this at all: between the staffing of the newspaper editors and the tasks of developing its ideology, there is a distance of considerable size, and the ability to write well or edit art does not necessarily imply the ability (or desire) to formulate the ideology of the new media. As a result, by mid -June 2000, I was forced to inform the FEP that my team was not ready to take on the work on the "restructuring" of the newspaper according to the first option. And after another month (that is, exactly a month before the death of the Kursk Premier League), a fundamental agreement was reached between the FEP and Leo Bruni on the formation of the new team of the Vestey.ru editorial office. Since August 1, the new edition began part of the work, and partly to the study of the features of the functioning of Internet media. The Kursk nuclear submarine at that time has not yet reached the last combat mission for her.

The whole story was stated by the MN correspondent and was carefully listened to it - first from my lips, and then from the lips of the new editor -in -chief Vestey.ru Lev Ivanovich Bruni . It would seem that this could be enough to discard the version of the "neutral newspaper closed due to articles on the submarine" as contrary to known facts. Instead, the journalist (or the editor that ruled his text) considered it possible to completely poke the chronological facts that became known to him, and the version of Kursk to submit to the reader as the only possible. At the same time, the gross violation of journalistic ethics was allowed: under the guise of a direct speech attributed to me and Lev Ivanovich Bruni, the newspaper sought words that we never said. The interviews promised to both of us, the interviews before the publication did not occur. Instead, an article has appeared where my statements are hardened as, for example, pearls:

For example, I also have Lenta.ru and " Russian Journal "

It is difficult to imagine that it could make me announce to my project "Russian magazine", in which I did not work for a single day in my life, and my last Freelance publications on the pages of RSA are dated July and September 1998 . In fact, I said in an interview with MN that a number of other employees Vestei.ru have their own headings in RG, which, in essence, duplicate the theme and frequency of their publications in my publication. I even called the names of these employees . But it seems that the text of my words was reproduced in the MN from the journalist’s memory, and the memory, apparently, was one -sided ... At least in the text attributed to Leo Bruni, very rude substitutions of the text and the meaning of statements were also present.

However, you should not think that I write my current note for the sake of a polemic with a colleague from the MN (by the way, a lady is highly pretty to me, like the publication itself, about the work in which I have only the kindest memories). It’s just that so far no one has been telling the whole truth about the reasons for those permutations in the newspaper Vesti.ru, which by October 9 should completely end with the change of rubricator, design and the publishing system. It seemed to me that the evening Internet is the very place where the true history of these reforms could be published, first -hand.

To the above, I can only add about the reasons for the permutations in Vesti.ru that the whole fate of this resource over the past year (that is, from the moment of opening to the full update of the team) confirms my idea of ​​the causes of the successes and failures of various Internet projects. In my opinion, only a project with absolutely intelligible positioning can today apply for the successful growth and conquering of key positions on the network, that is, one, the creators of which absolutely clearly and unequivocally understand its purpose, uniqueness and target audience in the existing market. In this sense, the success of the current Gazeta.ru (as well as its former hypostasis ) is completely understandable and logical. The same is the reason for the success of projects such as Mail.ru or ICQ , despite the lack of a lack of wealthy and influential competitors (including among Microsoft projects).

The main disadvantage of Vesti.ru under my leadership was precisely the lack of a clear and unambiguous positioning of the resource as a socio-political or apolitical and entertainment. An attempt to survive between two chairs in conditions of competition at once on two fronts was doomed in advance. Therefore, from the point of view of the realities of the content, the decision to clearly ensure the newspaper in one direction or another was purely economic, wherever the publication turned as a result of these reforms - the face to politics or the back to it.