"I can have fun now now"

- You leave The Village , a very successful network publication with great potential, in Esquire , a paper gloss, a magazine that seems to be brighter than the present. What was your motivation?

- On the one hand, I have been in The Village for three years and, frankly, a little tired. Before that, I have not worked in any place for so long. Always jumped. It was the first season of “Central Television” (the program of NTV TV channel. - Ed. ), A short period in “Snob”, before that FHM , “Big City” - an average of a year and a half everywhere. Three years in The Village is my absolute maximum. And then it coincided. A proposal has appeared, which, let’s say, does not often fall out. I thought where I could go further purely hypothetically, and very few options were drawn. And there was no E S CURIR magazine among them. I didn't even think about him. This is a great magazine where a lot of steep was done, and something new would be difficult to come up with, I reasoned superficially. But when the publishers turned to me and we began to communicate, I realized that the task is more interesting. I can now have a very good fun-and I always have fun when something happens.

- Do you know why the current editor -in -chief of the magazine Dmitry Golubovsky leaves?

- I am in a rather stupid situation now: the editorial office of the magazine finishes the September number, rents it out in early August, and only after that I come. I am not familiar with Mika himself (Golubovsky. - Ed. ), And it is difficult for me to discuss the project that was done under his leadership.

They began to kick me now that, they say, the magazine was free, and this is the political appointment and the magazine would cease to be free.

-And the publishers somehow explained to you why the publication needed a new editor-in-chief?

- There is a very general formulation of the publisher Mikhail Dubik, who said that the magazine needs development, the magazine needs to change. I think this can be limited now. Commenting on something else will probably not be very ethical.

- Do you follow the reaction to your appointment?

- Now they began to kick me that, they say, the magazine was free, and this was the political appointment and the magazine would cease to be free. Absolute nonsense. During negotiations with Mikhail Dubik (and they walked not one day) the only thing that was not discussed at all is what is possible and what is impossible. It was quite obvious that everything was possible. Within the framework of the Criminal Code. Therefore, the fears that are now walking on Facebook are absolutely unjustified.

-In your previous places you can’t say that you are some kind of very state-owned person.

-On the contrary, I have been familiar with the situation from the time when the team and the team had to somehow resist in censorship. There, in fact, every week I had to dodge the bloody scissors that cut out pieces of plots or whole plots, and invent something. This Village has never happened at all - and there was not a single reason for criticism in this sense either from the publishers or on my part. I think that there will be no Esquire .

- Was the Village succeeded with you, as one of the main city publications, not only to reflect city life, but also to influence it?

- There were direct reactions and responses, and sometimes very unexpected. Once our author wrote on a blog about the fact that in the transition to Tverskaya always stinks of shit, and literally in the evening of the same day the press service of the Department of Transport calls me and says: “Igor, we have an urgent comment on this topic.” I’m just ochanire, because sometimes comments from them have to wait for days or not wait at all, especially on some important topics, whether it is Liksutov’s divorce, Navalny’s accusations, and then suddenly such responsiveness. It turned out that the head of the department Maxim Liksutov read this record, she touched him so much that he asked to check. Some people went to sniff, did not sniff anything, and this all spun. By the way, they offered us together with the author to go there together and sniff there again, but we did not bring this story to the point. There was also a reaction to the commentary of Naum Kleiman (former director of the Museum of Cinema. - Ed. ), They told me that Minister Medinsky was very much offended by this comment. It was in January - Kleiman stated in the comment that he was ashamed of such a minister, and now I have a strange feeling that this comment was also the reason that Kleiman was sent, as I understand it, to an honorary pension.

Another influence - in the same Department of Transport there is Alexei Mityaev, who conventionally came there by our patronage. We just wrote about him once that he, along with friends-veloactivists, tried to win a competition for the design of the cycle paths schemes. But the competition in the amount of a million dollars won the general plan, and there was a rather large scandal, Navalny even wrote about this, and we know what Navalny retains. After that, Alexei Mityaev was invited to talk to the Department of Transport, and in the end he became a full -time employee and adviser to his head. It is Mityaev who is engaged in navigation in the Moscow metro and the development of bicycle movements. And we, in fact, took from him the first interview about how he tried to participate in the very competition.

Readers sometimes do not understand obvious things that, it seems to us, do not require any explanation.

- Now strong competition in the market of city publications?

- Three years ago, the situation was probably more concentrated. There was a single “poster” who wrote about everything, and there was no time left for the city, there was a “big city”, strong and good, but with her gaze. Everything else - “Moscow News”, “Evening Moscow” - you can probably not even take into account. In principle, we practically did not intersect. Now the field has been very very blurry. There is one leader - in all numbers these are the Village , but there are many publications around which it is difficult to follow, and I even got confused. There are CITIBUM, YOPOPOLIS, URBAN-URBAN, Poster Gorod, well, some separate small projects. There are many of them, attention is scattered.

- That is, The Village won everyone and no longer pays attention to competitors?

- No, of course, this is a flawed position - not to notice anyone and revel in their achievements. The Village is harshly monitoring its competitors, moreover, we always watched that publications of a different class - “Elephant”, “Lenti.ru”, when there was still a team of Galina Timchenko. We always watched what the Moscow Department is doing with Izvestia. Although in Izvestia they simply invented half of the news. Well, conditionally invented. There is a very simple principle. Here we somehow Alexander Urzhanov wrote a note about the mummers, walking around Moscow, which said that, having bought a nagike and a cap in a sex shop, anyone can become a Cossack. They see this, call the Cossacks, tell them about a sex shop and ask something like: "Meet Urzhanov, probably, will you do something with him?" Those answer: "Yes, we, of course, is to them ***." All - there is a note that the Cossacks are ready to teach Urzhanov. This was done in the publication "Marker", and then it merged with Izvestia, and this style went there. When we had rebranding in February and microformats appeared, we did such a thing called “Izvestia of the Day”. This is an unverifiable and most likely incorrect information, but noisy. Izvestia, because it is precisely due to this noise that they receive quotation ratings that Aram Ashotovich (Gabrelyanov, general director of the News Publishing House so loves to boast Media , which includes Izvestia. - Ed. ).

-On The Village, important socio-political events often stand next to consumer. “The release of Navalny, the discounts in Jnby and other news of this“ morning ” - there was suchan eyeliner , for example. This is because of the abundance of content-or do you think that such things do not need to distance from each other?

- In principle, a logical thing. What do our Facebook ribbons look like? Someone writes about Navalny, someone is posting about discounts, someone is a cat, someone, which means that he is unhappy with his neighbors, and Olga Romanova collects signatures. This is my Facebook tape. It does not cause any rejection with us. It does not seem to us that some schizophrenia occurs, although, if you decompose this with a list, there will be a little schizophrenic sensation.

-But on Facebook, the tape is formed in an involuntary way.

- But this is the picture of our world. And the news on The Village is the same - the veranda of Kofemania opened, Navalny was put under house arrest, Nikolskaya will be made pedestrian. A strange set, but it really interests people. Sometimes, if you write it through a comma, a feeling of schizophrenia may arise, but by and large it will somehow marry in our heads. And this does not mean that for us conditionally the arrest of Navalny and the discount in Jnby are absolutely equivalent things, but no, of course. It is clear that they have different importance.

- And how to understand the reader that it is not equivalent to you? It was a comment that collected above the liner, which collected the most likes: “The whole opposition in this is Navalny and discounts through a comma.”

- Good comment. I don’t know, it seems to me, having done such a fault, we did not offend either Alexei or the store. Listen, we have always been serious, but we did not have animal, aggressive seriousness. Therefore, as Navalny himself says, “The“ Irony ”plate.” It seems to me that we fulfilled our task before the reader, we informed him about both that. By the way, for many of our VKontakte readers, for example, the news about JNBY discounts is much more important than the news about Navalny, this is visible from the comments. It can be personally or someone else in the editorial office to offend or even insult me, but: a) I have no right to forbid these people to read The Village ; b) I have no right to prohibit them to comment. Yes, there are such people, they have such an opinion. We also communicate with them.

- By the way, about the comments. You often appear on social networks in the comments on The Village news. Is this such a personal fan or are you trying to educate the reader?

- “VKontakte” I am more fun, to be honest, because there is a great concentration of people with very specific perception. On Facebook people are quieter. The audience of VKontakte many things hurt. In general, comments are a sore question, when this Ukrainian story happened, everyone turned off the comments: “Lenta.ru”, “Gazeta.ru”, many who did not, although we had some kind of hellish holivar, demolished the roof thoroughly. We had two moderators sitting, monitoring all the posts associated with Ukraine, and cleaned, cleaned. Now people have somehow calmed down. And then we simply decided that it was wrong to open, then close. Or we say that this is web 2.0, this is a continuation of the post and this is the opinion of people, or we say: no, goodbye. Remember, in one of the first incarnations of the site of the "Big City" there were no comments. It seemed to me that this is a strange idea, but I understand why this was done. In order to maintain the feeling of your world, where some people who begin to scream, call you do not invade. We just had to do a double work-to cut off, remove these people, and conduct conversations with someone. There is some percentage of people quite sound, albeit angry-and this opinion is also interesting.

- You have a lot of interactive with readers - there is a community, there is a club of readers, they became the heroes of your materials. Tell me, is there anything that surprises you in the behavior of the audience?

- We even arranged a meeting with our readers. And at this meeting I was surprised that people, it turns out, believed: everything that we write about new shops, discounts, restaurants, a new menu is all commercial and paid. What we take money for all this. It was an absolute shock. Because everything was extremely simple with us - we had banners and special projects, where it is largely noted that they are made together with advertisers. All. If I found out that someone took a penny for something else, there would be a dismissal with a wolf ticket. It seemed to me that we have a crystal position, that in our content it is clear that we write about those and about these. Well, besides, we write so much, with this volume you need to have a sales service on seven floors. This showed that readers sometimes do not understand obvious things that, it seems to us, do not require any explanation. Sometimes you need to say basic things. We are a newspaper about Moscow, this is news, this is comments, this is blogs, something like that.

And this is also partly an outstanding fact that the mayor of Moscow gave an interview in virtually blog.

- The Village is interesting with the columns. They are on the site, but, except for the columns of an unknown citizen, this phenomenon is quite sporadic. Is it difficult to rebuild or is it some kind of conscious filter?

-Firstly, it is difficult to rebuild. And this always lacked time and effort. I do not like the story with regular columns, because the authors are very quickly written out. For example, I was asked to write in SNC , and already the third column was such a monstrous fele that I understand why they did not ask for the fourth. I quickly said everything that I wanted, because I, in my opinion, have no opinion on any reason. Or at least such an opinion that can be packaged in five thousand signs. And so I am an opponent of this story about regularity. Oleg Kashin, of course, can once a week, or even once a day, and write columns twice a day. But I am rather an opponent of this. By the way, we made one column with Oleg Kashin. We asked him to write a text for speed, because I was always interested in what speed it works at. And he wrote a wonderful column for, in my opinion, two hours. His k ashin.guru , as we see, is now very popular, there are a lot of readers and, most importantly, the incredible volume of materials. But Oleg Kashin is a separate story. We always wanted to make speakers when there is an occasion and a specific person who can explain this, tell.

- What are your favorite materials on The Village , what have you been, what are you proud of?

- From a formal point of view, this was an interview with Sobyanin. His organization took two years. When it happened, it became an absolute signal for me, that during this time we made a really influential resource out of a small online newspaper, because we could influence the press service in this case, on the city hall only with our authority, we do not even have a media license. And this is also partly an outstanding fact that the mayor of Moscow gave an interview in virtually blog. It was, of course, hellishly pleasant. And it doesn’t even matter what interviews it is - good, bad, deep, shallow: when it took place, I put a huge fat dick. And from the loved ones-for example, an interview with the mayor of Reykjavik, who somehow turned out to the ball, simply because it is Reykjavik, such a wonderful city. We were then unknown to anyone, but it seems to me that in part we introduced this to Runet with Yon Gnarr, who then surfaced many times in different cases, but no one really knew about him, and he was a wonderful completely uncle. There is still such an internal thing. This is the best title that we came up with in three years, I think. The news about the fact that the blogger Ilya Varlamov criticized how they laid the tile on some street, we entitled "Ilya Varlamov did not like the styling." It is worth adding that at that time Ilya Varlamov did not like us and called the hipster footcloth. We seemed to be answered in this headline, and even not really offended. This was invented by Artem Efimov, who worked for us as a chief editor, a dude from Lenta.ru, by the way. He for a long time instilled in our news standards and came up with such a title. Poetry in its purest form. For this I really love our editorial office.

- And what did not work out?

- I just can’t forgive my editorial office that we did not interview with the guys from Berkut, who moved to Moscow. I rushed with this for four months. There was already Ilya Azar, who wanted to take an interview, but we dug for a long time, searched for these people. In general, the "poster" was ahead of us, and I regret it hellishly. There were moments related to the nature of the authors. Sasha Urzhanov, his wonderful guide in the pit, the Tverskaya-Yamskaya district, wrote for about a year. Almost with ticks, it had to be pulled out of it.

- The Moscow authorities are widely entered by the media market - last week it was announced the creation of the city news agency. Can this be a reaction to the success of independent publications, including The Village ?

- If you look from the point of view of the city hall, it is obvious that many of their initiatives were under -noted in the media. For example, a story with tiles. Informationally, she came out completely stupidly. Does the wife of Sobyanin have to do with this? It does not have, it understands everyone, it’s stupid to argue. Is the tile great? Great everywhere, wherever she lay, from Nizhny Novgorod to Berlin. Nevertheless, they actually had to do this project somehow from the floor, although it was a completely logical, normal solution. But they lost his information in their pure form. Accordingly, they need such a large media equipment to: a) to scroll the right things; b) to defend your interests, this is also quite obvious - for the elections, etc.

- And how successfully they manage to operate in this market?

- For example, I know that in the “Evening Moscow” according to all sorts of metrics like Liveinternet there was a giant audience, but at the same time, these people spent about 30 seconds on the same metrics. What can be in time in 30 seconds? This suggests that, perhaps, these are not readers, but people who got there by accident, for example, from banners. Совершенно очевидно, что эти цифры относились владельцам, на Тверскую, 13: вот, посмотрите, как у нас тут все цветет и пахнет, — но на самом деле это полная ерунда. В то же время мне кажется, что сейчас у канала «Москва-24» и сайта М24.ru реально большая аудитория, ну, с такими ресурсами немудрено. И это, в принципе, нормально, потому что на The Village в последнее время была аудитория в районе 200 тысяч в день. В Москве же живет 15—18 миллионов, эти люди должны интересоваться, что происходит в городе, в их районе. Если бы нас читало хотя бы около 7 млн в день, то необходимости в этом большом медийном пуле, большой аудитории у московских властей не было бы. Так что я думаю, что их читают, и, по крайней мере, технологически это все сделано очень и очень неплохо. Другое дело, что туда, наверное, не все новости попадают, это связано с тем, кто владеет этим медиа. Это абсолютно естественная история. Она была такая же у Березовского и «Коммерсанта», ну плюс-минус, условно, или у нынешнего «Коммерсанта» и Усманова. Ничего удивительного, никакого открытия и никакого повода для истерики. Так и должно быть, так это и работает.

— Вы, как человек из интернета, как относитесь к прогнозам, что его скоро могут закрыть?

— Верю. Могут закрыть. В этом смысле я пессимистично настроен. Хорошо не будет. Вопрос, насколько будет плохо. Очевидно, что это рычаги, но на кого они будут давить — непонятно. Кому и чем помешали «Грани.ру», «Ежедневный журнал»? Представить себе не могу. Ну по-любому у них аудитория была очень маленькая, она у них даже выросла сразу после блокировки. Это очень глупое и немотивированное решение. Закрыть сайт «Каспаров.ру», ну боже ты мой, это смешно. Я понимаю, почему закрывают блог Навального. Как говорит мой бывший начальник, у людей память как у мухи, и если Навальный исчезнет из информационного поля, о нем реально забудут. Но кому понадобились колонки Виктора Шендеровича в «Ежедневном журнале», я представить не могу. Все это абсолютный волюнтаризм, взяли — отрубили. Кого они отрубят следующим, непонятно, но у них для этого сейчас есть все механизмы: блогеры не блогеры, СМИ не СМИ, любой сайт в любой зоне — они насоздавали себе возможностей, теперь сиди только и дергай.

— Если ситуация сложится так, что у вас не будет возможности заниматься своей профессией, — рассматриваете ли вы возможность эмиграции?

— Ну да, коллеги уезжают, но надо сказать, что кому-то повезло. Например, тот же Бершидский поехал туда, потому что ему сделал предложение Bloomberg . Если называть вещи своими именами. Если бы мне сделал предложение Economist , я бы, наверное, тоже поехал. Не знаю, правда, стал бы я писать такую отчаянную колонку , может быть, и нет. Просто наша профессия трудноконвертируемая. Я совершенно не надеюсь, что могу пригодиться за пределами русского языка. Самый отчаянный вариант, если что, уехать в Австралию и переключиться на что-то совсем другое. Например, пойти работать в бар. С нормальным графиком, с хорошими чаевыми, с соцпакетом, с защищенностью, массой свободного времени. Есть прекрасная фраза, которую местные люди там могут про себя сказать: «I have my own life» . Вот, извини, я работаю до семи, а после этого у меня моя собственная жизнь, не лезь ко мне. И все прекрасно понимают, там это работает. Такой вариант эмиграции не самый плохой, на мой взгляд, как ни странно. Хотя папа обещал меня за это проклясть.