TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/110590/1105220.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 3.6 KB | 84 lines

                                                                                PRESS, Page 84

A New and Better Pravda?


The official Soviet party newspaper plans to go independent


    When Mikhail Gorbachev decided a year ago that the Communist
Party daily Pravda needed a face-lift, he appointed Politburo
ally and confidant Ivan Frolov, 61, to perform the surgery.
Frolov quickly pledged that the conservative Soviet mouthpiece
would strive to reflect the "pluralism of opinions" within the
Communist Party. But the promised glasnost failed to
materialize. Last month at an open party meeting, Pravda
employees angrily demanded their editor in chief's resignation.
Frolov, they fumed, was high-handed, rude and a sycophant of
the worst order. Staff members charged that he muzzled
editorial voices and blocked attempts to modernize the paper's
gray pages, thus driving away readers.

    Initially, Frolov offered to resign. But after the Central
Committee insisted that he stay put, he went on the offensive.
Last week he announced a new and more autonomous Pravda, one
that will be independently managed, will accept advertising
from foreign firms and will strive harder to woo back readers.
Although the paper will retain "deep ideological ties" with the
party, it will be run by an independent association that will
not only publish Pravda (the name means truth) and its Sunday
supplement but will also develop a television program, an
international edition and a string of advertising supplements.


    Frolov claimed the autonomy of the Pravda Association, whose
membership is as yet undetermined, would free the paper and its
new ventures from control and funding by the Central Committee.
Instead, money will be provided by foreign advertisers and
unnamed "major international information magnates."

    The Pravda bailout plan is a bold answer to desperate
circumstances. During the past two years, the newspaper's
circulation has slipped from 10 million readers to 7.7 million,
and it is expected to drop to 3 million in 1991. Pravda's
declining appeal is in part caused by higher subscription
costs, imposed while the economy is virtually at a standstill.
But a more profound reason is the simple fact that Soviet
citizens no longer need to put up with an unappetizing diet of
Communist propaganda. Rather, they can turn to a welter of new
publications at street kiosks, from the liberal weekly Moscow
News and Tema, a newspaper that supports gay and lesbian
rights, to the business weekly Commersant and Protestant, a
Baptist newspaper.

    Pravda's 500 employees were quick to ask where the new
association's funding would come from. Frolov did not say where
he would get the 1 billion rubles needed to cover a year's rent
on a television studio for the planned video show. But foreign
advertising may be a pipe dream. Last May Pravda offered 150
U.S. business executives the opportunity to run full-page ads
at approximately $50,000 each; the response was tepid.

    That leaves the "international magnate" solution. Pravda
employees speculate that Frolov was referring to British
publishing tycoon Robert Maxwell, who has visited Gorbachev
twice this year, as a potential backer. A day after Frolov's
announcement, the youth daily Komsomolskaya Pravda charged that
Maxwell had recently pulled out of a joint venture with the
independent Moscow News and closed the paper's London edition
without warning. Even if a white knight comes to Frolov's
rescue, it is hard to see how the beleaguered editor can
effectively implement all the much needed changes.


By Jill Smolowe. Reported by Yuri Zarakhovich/Moscow.