Documents / FOIA release
This is a JPRS translation, dated 6 November 1991 and held in a CIA release, of an article from the Moscow paper LITERATURNAYA GAZETA by correspondent Tatyana Fast. It tells how Riga journalists founded NEZAVISIMAYA BALTIYSKAYA GAZETA with backing from a business association, which then pressured and threatened them. The staff broke with the sponsor and relaunched as BALTIYSKAYA GAZETA. The article notes that the old title's new staff now writes about UFOs, nutrition and sex.
“Cooper”2 pages
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
## Document 15 of 17 Page 4 want the issue to be on schedule and reach the newsstands on a certain day, add another couple of thousand in cash (for each issue) for bribes. The result: To publish the newspaper in at least 100,000 copies, we need half a million as a minimum. To make the ends meet, we would have to either hike up the price per copy, or to have a million-copy print runs. In the current- quite saturated-newspaper market either option is unrealistic. One can, of course, hope for advertising revenue, but this is also a double-edged sword: Advertisers prefer to pay higher rates but place their ads in newspapers with larger circulation. No matter how we look, it seems that independence is the province of the rich. 14. But how do colleagues from other publications exist? It turned out that since ATGIMINAS had separated from the Sajudis, it became impossible for it to maintain the staff and to pay authors' fees. There are now only three staff members. SOGLASIYE (also formerly a Sajudis newspaper) went bankrupt and closed. We heard of one Moscow weekly that apparently survived thanks only to the editor's former profession in construction business. Another one apparently runs a successful business selling KamAZ trucks. The Riga political newspaper BALTIYSKOYE VREMYA stays afloat by publishing a pornographic supplement YESHCHE; SM-SEGODNYA (previously SOVETSKAYA MOLODEZH) publishes several commercial supplements, each 'contributing'' something to the kitty. So, if you want to publish a newspaper, it looks like you either have to sell something, or sell yourself. 15. Meanwhile, there were prospective buyers for our newspaper, too. Among those who showed interest were- strange as it may seem-the CPL Central Committee (telephone call): 'We hear you have some money problems. How much do you need?''; the military (they offered to share their office space); some people engaged in pump manufacturing and in reselling imported shoes. We got offers-through intermediaries-from cooperatives in the Crimea, one bank in the Transcaucasus, and then simultaneously several firms in Moscow. Some were interested in an opportunity to establish themselves in the Baltic market; others-to invest rubles where tomorrow there may be hard currency; still others-to make politics through someone else's efforts. Almost all promised millions. Alas, nobody was interested in the newspaper as such, let alone an independent one. There was a specific price tag attached to the millions-the right to the newspaper. We did not find common language with any of them. 16. Nevertheless, we survived... After three months of stoppage, desperation, and broken illusions, we took a small loan in the bank and started with commercial supplements. For several months, nobody was paid a salary- all income went to buy paper for the future newspaper. At the same time, we were looking for new authors.
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 5 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.