A reminder

If anybody still thinks Pravda is a newspaper of record, it’s your last chance to adjust to reality. Privately owned since the early 1990s, Pravda belongs to a class of Russian newspapers that mix second-rate reporting with second-rate tabloidism, and even in that category, they are second-rate, which their limited circulation reflects. The fact they run a web site in funny English does not change that but serves to perpetuate the impression that Pravda is actually something important.

Businessmen and people with good jobs in the capitals read Vedomosti and Kommersant. My mother in law reads Izvestia. Truly common people read KP and MK, leaders in the half-tabloid class. I haven’t met anybody who reads Pravda yet.

UPDATE: I forgot the best of the best, the most inimitable tabloid, Zhizn’ (“Life”). I’m not sure if it has a Web site though.

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