The Moscow Times is an English-language daily newspaper published in Moscow, Russia, with a circulation of 35,000 copies. The Moscow Times and its sister publication, The St. Petersburg Times, are owned by Sanoma Corporation, a Finnish media company based in Helsinki.
With a print run of 35,000 copies, the paper is distributed for free at places frequented by English-speaking expatriates such as hotels, cafés, embassies, and airlines, but it is not available at newsstands. It is also available by subscription, and it is increasingly read by English-speaking Russians. It seeks to be a "one-stop information portal for Moscow expats".
The newspaper regularly publishes articles by prominent Russian journalists such as Yulia Latynina and Ivan Nechepurenko. It has served as a "training ground" for foreign correspondents, including Ellen Barry, future New York Times Moscow bureau chief and Pulitzer Prize winner.
History
Founding
Derk Sauer, a Dutch publisher who came to Moscow in 1989, made plans to turn his small, twice-weekly paper called the Moscow Guardian into a world-class daily newspaper. Sauer brought in Meg Bortin as its first editor in May 1992, and the team used a Radisson Slavyanskaya Hotel as its headquarters.
The first edition of The Moscow Times was published on October 2, 1992, and it quickly became "a primary source of news and opinion" quoted both in Russia and the West.
It "played an important role by giving space to Russian commentators". For example, in the fall of 1993, it was able to play a role in defeating the censors: "when anti-Yeltsin forces occupied the Russian Parliament and censorship was revived. Russian newspapers came out with large blank spaces on their front pages where articles critical of the authorities had been suppressed. The writers of those articles came to see us. Published the next day in English in The Moscow Times, their articles were quickly picked up and beamed back in Russian by the BBC and other foreign radios, defeating the censors."
Until 2000, it was based in the old headquarters of Pravda, and it was the first Western daily to be published in Russia. In 1997, the website moscowtimes.ru was registered.
Expansion
In 2003â€"04, the Jobs & Careers and Real Estate appendixes were added. 2005 saw the addition of the glamorous Moscow Guide appendix, which featured high culture, and the launch of the annual Moscow Dining Guide.
Until 2005, the paper was owned by Independent Media, a Moscow-registered publishing house that also prints a Russian-language daily newspaper, Vedomosti, The St. Petersburg Times (The Moscow Times' counterpart in Saint Petersburg) and Russian-language versions of popular glossy magazines such as FHM, Men's Health and Cosmopolitan. That year, Independent Media was acquired by the Finnish publishing group Sanoma.
In 2006, the paper began its alliance with the International Herald Tribune, while 2009 saw the launch of the themoscowtimes.com website. The first color issue was published in 2010.
In 2009, it published Russia for Beginners: A Foreigners Guide to Russia, written by foreign authors who offer advice based on their own experiences of living in Russia. The paper celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2012 with a gala dinner at the Hotel Baltschug Kempinski Moscow.
Problems
In April 2014 longtime editor-in-chief Andrew McChesney stepped down and was replaced by Nabi Abdullaev, a former Moscow Times as a reporter, news editor, managing editor, and deputy editor-in-chief who left in 2011 to head RIA Novosti's foreign-language news service. Shortly after his appointment, Abdullaev argued in The Guardian that the west's "biased journalism...robs the west of its moral authority".
In the aftermath of the Ukrainian crisis, The Moscow Times was criticized by pro-Kremlin pundits like Izvestia columnist Israel Shamir, who in December 2014 called it a "militant anti-Putin paper, a digest of the Western press with extreme bias in covering events in Russia". In October 2014 The Moscow Times made the decision to suspend online comments after an increase in offensive comments, possibly related to Russia's alleged online misinformation campaign over the Ukrainian crisis. The paper disabled comments for two reasonsâ€"it was an incovenience for its readers as well as being a legal liability, because under Russian law websites are liable for all content, including user-generated content like comments.
In January 2014, malicious ads on the Times website redirected visitors to an exploit kit landing page. In December 2014, The Moscow Times was forced offline for two days by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. It was forced offline a second time in February 2015 for unknown reasons.
Structure
Regular sections
The Moscow Times highlights politics events that happen inside the country and abroad, business and culture news five days a week.
- News â€" interpretation of the latest news and events (Russia and CIS)
- Business and finance â€" coverage of the business world
- Stocks â€" coverage of the financial and stock markets
- Opinion â€" op-eds
- Real estate â€" real estate market (Tuesdays)
- Job opportunities â€" vacancies and education (Wednesdays and Fridays)
- Classifieds â€" private ads
- Miniguide â€" referential information
- Entertainment â€" main events of the day, bulletin board of Moscow's expatriates
- Context â€" leisure and entertainment
- What's On â€" calendar of culture events: cinema, theatre, exhibitions, ballet, opera (Thursdays)
Separate publications and special projects
- Online, it has PDF issues that go back to 2001, and its archive contains nearly 130,000 articles dating back to 1994.
- International Herald Tribune â€" international news every day
- Inter-country annexes The Moscow Times â€" Russia-France, Russia-Finland, Russia-UK, etc. These editions are dedicated to bilateral issues of cooperation and promote establishing of business and investment programs of interaction between two countries. They focus on economic, trade, and investment, as well as inter-culture project, tourism issues.
- Real Estate Catalog and Real Estate Quarterly â€" regular specialized business editions about real estate market
- The Moscow Times Guide â€" Russia for Beginners, Russia for the Advanced, Dining Guide, Travel Guide, Bar Guide glamorous edition, seasonal style guide, fashionable trends, secular, and culture events in Moscow.
- Conferences: The Moscow Times â€" meeting place of Russian and foreign investors, businessmen and experts in Russia and abroad as well.
See also
- List of newspapers in Russia
- Media of Russia
References
Bibliography
- Michielsen, Dido: Moscow Times. Het Russische avontuur van Derk Sauer en Ellen Verbeek. Amsterdam, Uitgeverij Nieuw Amsterdam, 2013. ISBN 9789046814727 (Dutch language).
External links
- Official website