Pro-Kremlin businessman buys Russian business newspaper

A little-known Russian media executive with close commercial ties to the state has bought leading business newspaper Vedomosti, reports Max Seddon of the Financial Times.

Seddon reports, “Staff at Vedomosti say the eleventh-hour appearance of Ivan Eremin to rescue the sale is unlikely to ease their stand-off with the paper’s new acting editor, whom they claim banned writing on topics that the Kremlin considers taboo.

“The clash over Vedomosti, according to its reporters, shows the Kremlin wants to increase its control over what little remains of the nominally independent media. In recent years, several other outlets have been sold to Kremlin-friendly owners and have installed pliant editors, prompting staff to quit en masse.

“A consortium led by publisher Demyan Kudryavtsev took over Vedomosti — co-founded and formerly co-owned by the FT and the Wall Street Journal — in 2015 after Russia limited foreign ownership of media to 20 per cent.”

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Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.