Free Press In Exile: Galina Timchenko gives Russians uncensored news
Open Access
Author:
Kohlman, Emily Marya
Area of Honors:
Interdisciplinary in Journalism and Russian
Degree:
Bachelor of Arts
Document Type:
Thesis
Thesis Supervisors:
Anthony Barbieri, Thesis Supervisor Anthony Barbieri, Thesis Honors Advisor Irina Mikaelian, Thesis Honors Advisor Russell Edgar Eshleman Jr., Faculty Reader
Keywords:
Media Russia Galina Timchenko Latvia Vladimir Putin Donald Trump BuzzFeed Journalism Censorship News Press Freedom International Reporting Committee to Protect Journalists Mikhail Khodorkovsky Meduza Lenta Social Media
Abstract:
I traveled to Riga, Latvia, in November 2017 to report in both English and Russian for this profile on Galina Timchenko, CEO and one of the founders of the independent Russian media outlet based in Riga, called Meduza. In a Kremlin "media purge" in the heat of the crisis in Ukraine in 2014, Timchenko was fired as editor in chief from Lenta, an online news outlet so widely read that it was referred to as the "Russian New York Times." She, along with members of her staff at Lenta who left in protest to her firing, moved to Riga to start an outlet under protection of the European Union so that they could not be censored. Meduza now has more than 10 million unique visitors a month and, in September 2017, announced a partnership with BuzzFeed. I have written both English and Russian versions of Timchenko’s profile and included the images from my visit to Meduza’s Riga office.
