Like news in my throat

Closing newsru.com is a signal that honest news in Russia has become too “toxic”

Newsru.com, one of the oldest Runet media projects that has existed since 2000, has closed down. The portal was engaged in news aggregation, and its closure was a great loss for professionals, many of whom are accustomed to checking their understanding of the "agenda" with the front page of Newsru.com. Ten seconds was usually enough to check if you missed some important story or publication from colleagues from other publications. The editors of the project made it possible to quickly understand the topic, get involved in it. The school of the newspaper "Segodnya", which was published until 2001 by a consortium of private banks with the participation of Vladimir Gusinsky, had an effect. It was from this project that the editor-in-chief of Newsru.com Elena Bereznitskaya-Bruni came out.

From the outside, the task of collecting all the important news on one page may seem simple, but in reality there is a lot of work behind this, especially if you have been doing it continuously for more than two decades. The project team did an excellent job and

at some point in time, getting into the top 3 Newsru.com publications with your news meant a lot to journalists - it was recognition of your work.

It was Newsru.com, together with the early Lenta.ru, that accustomed the public to the idea that news can be consumed around the clock, as events unfold, and not only as it was customary in the 20th century - in a "packet format", that is, in in the form of morning newspapers and evening television news.

Newsru.com is shutting down for economic reasons, and one might say that the era of news aggregators is over. On the one hand, their niche was occupied by search engines Google and Yandex, which have their own automated news analysis systems. On the other hand, according to a similar scheme, several projects are currently working in Russian, for which the collection of all important news is a way to draw attention to their own content. Finally, Newsru.com has long been offered competition by social networks: by following the right people on Facebook, you are unlikely to miss the really important information on your topics.

Despite this, the Newsru.com model continues to be viable in other conditions, such as in the Israeli market: the local news site from the same editorial office has become the most popular in the country for those who read news in Russian. This means that it is not only a matter of changing the economy of the media market - at least part of Newsru.com's problems is related to the notorious "political atmosphere".

A few weeks ago, the authorities in Minsk passed laws banning journalists from reporting from "unauthorized rallies," effectively banning the profession. The work of a journalist is simple: if something happens, he must tell about it. It is the ability to tell about everything that happened that distinguishes a journalist from a propagandist. The latter builds his career on silence - like, for example, federal television was silent for many weeks last year about the protests in Khabarovsk. From here, professional standards grow: if something happens, the journalist talks about it, giving the floor to all parties to the conflict.

And if there is a dictatorship in your country, the journalist describes this process of degradation. He talks about the persecution of opponents of the government and about corruption. If you are a professional news reviewer, you will inevitably "radicalize" in such a situation. You start writing things that do not please the authorities, who would rather you keep quiet about it. So independent journalism, and indeed any professional work in this area, in principle, becomes "oppositional". And if you're just putting together all the important news, it's like you're doing an uncompromising critique of the regime.

The work standards of Newsru.com, as previously of Vedomosti and several other publications, came into conflict with the Russian reality itself.

It seems that the main blow to Newsru.com was caused by a situation in which honest news becomes too “toxic” for advertisers - it is safer for them to carry their money to where they write about “lifestyle”, “jam festival” or, at worst, about "geopolitical issues". Otherwise, it turns out that you "finance the opposition." In this sense, the closure of Newsru.com against the backdrop of endless searches of independent politicians and the defeat of Navalny's supporters looks quite symbolic. Even if this happened for purely economic reasons, our economy has long been run by officials.

I have been reading Newsru.com for most of my life, and at some point I was surprised to find that they reprint my notes for the "Opinions" section - so I ended up in good company. Thank you for your work, colleagues. The news will be back.