🗞️ Moscow regional officials reportedly plan to overhaul entire municipal newspaper system

Local journalism in Moscow is about to become more uniform. Regional officials reportedly plan to close the newsrooms at all municipal newspapers and migrate the outlets to a single publishing house. The regional government’s deputy minister of information and social communications made the announcement at a meeting almost a month ago, but a transcript of those remarks has only just reached the independent website Mediazona. The government currently spends roughly 1 billion rubles ($16.2 million) to run 57 separate municipal newspapers.

Journalists working in Moscow’s municipal newspaper system say the changes will eliminate as many as 800 jobs, “destroy” years of work building readers’ trust and respect, and reduce local reporting to “identical, carbon copy news bulletins.” The same group also warns that the region won’t actually save any money. “It will simply accumulate in the hands of certain people,” the journalists said in a collective appeal.