Thursday, October 12, 201712:00 PM - 1:30 PM
10383 Bunche Hall
Headquartered in Riga, Latvia, Meduza is the world’s number one independent source for professional reporting on Russia in Russian and English language editions. It is an online newspaper and news aggregator covering Russia and the Eurasian region, headed by Galina Timchenko, the former chief editor of the news website Lenta.ru, which during her tenure became the most popular news outlet on the Russian Internet. Meduza is run by a team of Russian journalists who resigned from their jobs at Lenta.ru, following Timchenko’s unexpected removal from her post by Alexander Mamut, the Putin-connected oligarch who owns the website. Meduza launched in October 2014 and by August 2017 its monthly readership exceeded 7.5 million unique visitors, with more than 700,000 app downloads and more than 2,000,000 followers on social media. Meduza and Buzzfeed recently announced an editorial partnership focused on joint investigative reports.
Ilya Krasilshchik, Meduza’s publisher, will explain what it takes to mount such a project in an environment flooded by the Kremlin’s propaganda, and Anna Veduta, Meduza’s global outreach director, will discuss Meduza’s English-language edition.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:
Ilya Krasilshchik is Meduza’s publisher. In 2008, after leaving college at 21, Ilya became the chief editor of Afisha, then Moscow’s most influential entertainment and city life magazine. In his five years at Afisha, the magazine published more the 100 issues, including an issue dedicated to “Coming Out” stories (a response to Russia’s criminalization of so-called “gay propaganda”), as well as several special editions, including issues on “the oral history of the Russian media” and “the oral history of the Russian Internet.” In October 2014, he left Afisha and joined two partners to launch Meduza, a groundbreaking Russian-language news outlet based in Riga, Latvia.
Anna Veduta is Meduza’s global outreach director, and also heads Meduza in English in Washington, D.C. Prior to Meduza, Anna served as Press Secretary to Alexey Navalny, Russia’s leading opposition politician and 2018 presidential hopeful. Anna headed Navalny's press office during his Moscow mayoral campaign in 2013, when he leveraged social media channels to break a blockage by Russia’s traditional media, nearly forcing a runoff vote. Anna holds degrees in political science and international relations from Moscow State University and Columbia University’s School of International Public Affairs.
DISCUSSANT: Daniel Treisman is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles. He received his Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University in 1995. His work focuses on the politics and political economy of Russia, and on comparative political economy (in particular, the determinants of good government and the politics of macroeconomic policy). His latest book is The Return: Russia’s Journey from Gorbachev to Medvedev (2011).
Cost : Free and open to the public.
Sponsor(s): Center for European and Russian Studies