Democracy Is Dangerous for the Media

Most people at their dachas like to listen to the radio while they work or relax. My family generally keeps the radio on the outdoor veranda of our dacha tuned to Ekho Moskvy. But this year, we have also been listening to the newly launched Kommersant and Komsomolskaya Pravda radio stations. It is always interesting to hear the voices of the journalists whose articles we read in our favorite newspapers.

Enjoying the growing pluralism in the print media is a great way to escape from my professional routine, filled with talk about the fall in advertising revenues and how the end is near for newspapers as readership continues to decline. It is also a way to escape the stupid questions from foreigners who seriously believe that the country’s journalists are struggling to survive under Russia’s repressive regime.

On the contrary, the Russian media have made some amazing progress over the past 12 years, including during the current economic crisis.

The history of Russia’s modern, market-oriented press began with the 1998 financial crisis that helped stimulate the economic boom that lasted until late 2008. Media advertising revenues grew by 20 percent or more annually during that decade. Russia has become the 10th-largest media market in the world. The government’s crackdown on democracy during the 2000s made it unsafe for oligarchs to invest in the media as a tool for blackmailing and racketeering, as they did in the 1990s. In other words, the media were forced to bring in revenue using more honest methods — at least as compared to the 1990s.

This is how the modernization of Russian media began. The advertising boom made it possible to invest billions of dollars into an industry that had been degrading since the liberal economic reforms of the 1990s. In fact, $4 billion was invested between 2003 and 2008 alone in the printing industry. As a result, this sector quickly became modern and just as competitive as the beer market.

Although in 2009 overall media advertising revenues have fallen by an average of 26 percent — and 40 percent for the print media alone — the crisis year has also seen a new breakthrough in modernization. The driving force has been the need for effective management. With publishers expanding their formats to 24-hour coverage on the Internet, radio and perhaps, in the future, television, they are no longer tied to the schedule of a daily newspaper and have created multimedia newsrooms providing content for several venues simultaneously. In the last year alone, this has become the typical business model not only for wealthy Moscow publications but also for regional market leaders.

Despite this positive picture, two things worry me. The first is the threat of a new democracy emerging, which can mean only one thing — that the leading oligarchs will once again control the media as they did in the ’90s. The second concern is the possibility that we will be hit by a new wave of the economic crisis. If that were to happen, the media could reach such dizzying heights of professionalism that even an old hand such as myself might have difficulty keeping pace.