Rise and Fall and Rise and Fall of Russian Media — a talk by Ilia Krasilshchik

Despite the increasing state control over free speech, the Russian media market is still alive — and huge. There are tens of independent online media with a multimillion audience and each year we get more. How do you survive on the internet when it is controlled by the state? How do you find professional journalists when there are no decent schools of journalism? How do you manage a media outlet when you do not know what is going to happen tomorrow? Publisher of the popular Russian language online media outlet Meduza Ilia Krasilshchik will explain how the world of Russian media works.

After dropping out of university at 21, in 2008 Ilya Krasilshchik became the editor of the then most influential Moscow entertainment and city life magazine Afisha. During his five-year tenure, Afisha published more than 100 issues, including specials like “Oral History of the Russian
Media” and “Oral History of the Russian Internet” and a “Coming Outs” issue (as an answer to the ”LGBT propaganda” law adopted by the Russian State Duma). He stepped down in 2013 to become the Product Director at Afisha publishing company, launching three separate web-based media and а TV streaming service in one year. In October 2014, he finally left Afisha, and together with two partners launched Meduza, a groundbreaking Russian language web news outlet based in Riga, Latvia. By December 2015 the monthly readership of Meduza exceeded 3.5 million unique visitors, with 320,000 app downloads and more than 500,000 followers on social media. Seventy percent of Meduza’s audience is based in Russia.