You're reading: Russian journalists move to Riga to set up an independent media in exile

RIGA, Latvia – It’s a typical newsroom, but not typical journalists.

This tiny
apartment in downtown Riga is headquarters for a team of Russian journalists
who call themselves Russia’s free press in exile.

They
started their Meduza news outlet (Russian for “jellyfish”) in
October, when some 20 veterans of the Russian online newspaper Lenta.ru, headed
by their chief editor Galina Timchenko, relocated to Riga.

Many quit
their jobs in March, following Timchenko’s firing by website owner Alexander
Mamut, reportedly for publishing an interview with Ukraine’s Right Sector
leader Dmytro Yarosh, who holds ardently anti-Russian views.

Russia’s
regulator considered the material as a violation of a law against extremism.
The journalists got the message that they wouldn’t be able to escape censorship
if they stayed in Russia.

“The
dismissal of the chief editor and the appointment of the pro-Kremlin official is
a violation of the law on media, which discusses the inadmissibility of
censorship,” reads an open letter of the Lenta journalist in protest of
Timchenko’s dismissal.

Timchenko
described their move to Riga as a “forced measure” that was the
result of suffocating working conditions in Russia, she said in an interview
with The Moscow Times.

Konstantin
Benyumov, chief editor of English-language edition of Meduza, explains that
they ended up in an ex-Soviet republic because it’s cheaper to start a business
and register new media in Latvia.

Moreover,
there is a big Russian community in Latvia with a population of only two
million people.

Some of the
Russians in Latvia are pro-Kremlin, however.

“I’m
afraid they like Russian regime a bit more than we do,” he explains. “A taxi
driver once told me that Russians should have deployed troops to Helsinki
also.”

The team
focuses on mostly Russian topics, but also keeps an eye on Ukrainian events.
They still have special correspondents in Russia. Meduza translates its stories
in English and aggregates. They also have stories published by The Guardian,
Quartz and Buzz Feed.

Even though
they launched its English version a couple of months ago, they already have
more than 3,300 Twitter followers. Meduza’s home page has more than 123,000
Twitter followers and 50,000 Facebook likes.

The team
also attracts its readers with quizzes and special projects aimed to explain
Russia for the Russian audience and English speakers. Index cards explain
complex topics of Russian politics or economy in a format that mixes Q&A
and slideshow.

Meduza

Meduza journalists work in their office in Riga.

In an
interview with Forbes Russia in September Meduza’s publisher Ilya Krasilshchik
said that “if everyone didn’t discuss Meduza in a year – it would mean that we
have failed.”

Benyumov is
certain that Meduza is succeeding.

Meduza
collections donations and has investors behind the project, although they won’t
identify them. “They have nothing to do neither with media nor with the
politics,” Timchenko was quoted as saying.

The site
has already reached three million unique visitors a month. Around 80 percent of
their audience lives in Russia.

Meduza is
also the biggest Baltic media outlet, but rarely covers local news.

“None of us
could answer the question how long we’ll stay in Riga. We left so we could keep
doing our job, and we made our work secure – so Russian authorities won’t be
able to come to our newsroom and take away our computers and a server – we cut
off this danger and left.”

However,
the team would be ready to return to Russia as soon as the repression ends.

For now,
they have each other and freedom of speech.

“If there’s
a need for urgent work – say, at night – none is hanging out in the bar. Our
life scheme is work and sleep, so we’re ready to work even at 3 a.m.” And
that’s what Meduza did while reporting on a murder of opposition leader Boris
Nemtsov, killed near the Kremlin on Feb. 27.

They miss
home, but are happy to work together in new circumstances.

“We’re kind
of a dysfunctional family,” Benyumov adds, smiling. “But all people here are
nice.”

Kyiv Post
staff writer Olena Goncharova can be reached at [email protected].