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  • BDG: How Newspaper Closed through Pressure Develops Online

    Last year, Aliaksandr Lukashenka was surprised to learn that the newspaper BDG.Belorusskaya Delovaya Gazeta was working online, although ten years before the paper version had to close down because of the pressure on printing houses, who subsequently refused to print the newspaper.

     

     

    The news­pa­per had been one of the top places for crit­i­cal inde­pen­dent press; there worked many famous jour­nal­ists, includ­ing Svi­at­lana Kalink­i­na and Iry­na Khalip. The news­pa­per had to with­stand a wave of harass­ment. In May 2003, pub­li­ca­tion of the news­pa­per was sus­pend­ed for a month in rela­tion with a crim­i­nal case (insult­ing the pres­i­dent), ini­ti­at­ed by the Gen­er­al prosecutor’s office.  In March 2006, Beloruskaya Delo­vaya Gaze­ta was closed through the ban to pub­lish it in Belaru­sian print hous­es and dis­trib­ute through state monop­o­lists. The news­pa­per had the cir­cu­la­tion of 65 – 70 thou­sand copies a week.

    In 2015, Ali­ak­san­dr Lukashen­ka was sur­prised to hear a ques­tion from a cor­re­spon­dent of BDG.

    “I am sor­ry,” said the pres­i­dent. “Where is the BDG that we read avid­ly 20 years ago?” “Twen­ty three years ago,” put it cor­rect­ly the cor­re­spon­dent Ale­na Nest­siarovich. “The print ver­sion was closed, as we all know.” “Why? Again dic­ta­tor­ship?” The cor­re­spon­dent excused that she did not work there at that time. “Wasn’t I the rea­son for that it was closed?” asked the pres­i­dent. “Closed, well, closed,” said Ale­na. “Was I guilty?” “Nobody said you are guilty.” “I just put it clear because it had dis­ap­peared; now the press sec­re­tary has not brought it to me for a long time.  I always get BDG only in reviews – BDG online, and there is no news­pa­per. So, there is no news­pa­per?” “No news­pa­per, only online.”

    BAJ tried to find out how the news­pa­per is liv­ing online, and the chief edi­tor of the web­site BDG.by Ale­na Nest­siarovich kind­ly agreed to answer the ques­tions.

    “Now it is an infor­ma­tion­al and ana­lyt­i­cal resource rather than a news web­site. We decid­ed to pub­lish more valu­able arti­cles, so called long-reads, and make a stricter selec­tion of news, based on the inter­ests of busi­ness audi­ence. This is our under­stand­ing of con­ti­nu­ity, because BDG used to be famous for its qual­i­ty ana­lyt­i­cal texts. Con­cep­tu­al­ly, the nich­es is still free. In fact, we are doing now what Piotr Mart­sau want­ed to do with the web­site (the newspaper’s founder and chief edi­tor Piotr Mart­sau died in 2014). He said he want­ed to trans­form the web­site into an ana­lyt­i­cal media resource, based on mod­ern tech­nolo­gies and new oppor­tu­ni­ties. We start­ed to work over it, redesigned and changed the approach to con­tent selec­tion.

    “БДГ” жывая, пазбягае палітыкі і плануе выйсці на самаакупнасць

    Whom the web­site belongs?

    The web­site is sup­port­ed by Martsau’s friends, also his daugh­ter Lisave­ta agreed to take part. The edi­to­r­i­al office include both expe­ri­enced jour­nal­ists, who have worked for BDG for a long time, and young authors as well.  The web­site oper­ates under a legal enti­ty, the edi­to­r­i­al office is locat­ed in the same build­ing, how­ev­er, it occu­pies only a small room – it used to be a whole floor.

    What are the newspaper’s plans? Are you going to do one more busi­ness affairs mass medi­um?

    The web­site has oper­at­ed all the time since the paper ver­sion was closed, but with lim­it­ed resources and pos­si­bil­i­ties. Now we are try­ing to make it a payable project. This is what Piotr Mart­sau always want­ed to do, includ­ing the paper ver­sion times. We would like it to be a seri­ous expert and ana­lyt­i­cal resource aimed at busi­ness and polit­i­cal cir­cles in our coun­try.

    We like a lot the projects like Probusіness.by or Marketіng.by – expert ori­ent­ed web­sites for busi­ness audi­ences. We think that Belarus now lacks media projects and plat­forms like that – they should be much more in num­ber.

    We want to make a web­site cov­er­ing busi­ness issues based on ana­lyt­i­cal and prac­tice ori­ent­ed approach. I mean we are now talk­ing about the prob­lem deal­ing with busi­ness jour­nal­ism, espe­cial­ly invest­ment and finances jour­nal­ism.

    We hope that in future, with par­tic­i­pa­tion of BDG, there will appear also edu­ca­tion­al projects in the sphere of mod­ern busi­ness jour­nal­ism. It would live up to expec­ta­tions of invest­ments and busi­nessper­sons from oth­er coun­tries who con­sid­er an oppor­tu­ni­ty to oper­ate in Belarus.

    Besides, we are going to become an offline plat­form for direct dia­logue of busi­nessper­sons, offi­cials, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of dif­fer­ent civ­il orga­ni­za­tions. These will be expert meet­ings on spe­cif­ic issues requir­ing urgent solu­tions.

    “БДГ” жывая, пазбягае палітыкі і плануе выйсці на самаакупнасць

    Last year, the news­pa­per Belorusy I Rynok split into two mass media. Thus, you have two new com­peti­tors, don’t you?

    I read their arti­cles. They are inter­est­ing, use­ful and raise respect and inter­est. But our approach will be dif­fer­ent, more towards analy­sis and prac­tice. In all we think that ris­ing com­pet­i­tive­ness in the seg­ment of busi­ness media is a good trend. But, in our view, it is yet to come to Belarus, for now com­pe­ti­tion here is very small.

    We are look­ing for authors active­ly, although, with the view to the set goals, our demands to jour­nal­ists are quite spe­cif­ic. We take only those jour­nal­ists t our team whom we trust. Piotr Mart­sau always stuck to the point that our jour­nal­ist should be not only a tal­ent­ed and high­ly qual­i­fied jour­nal­ist, but also a good per­son.

    We think that with trust­ed per­sons, we will have inter­est­ing work. With them, we can not only become self-payable, but also to cre­ate a suc­cess­ful prof­itable project use­ful for the soci­ety.

    On Feb­ru­ary 7 this year, BDG turned 24.

    Pho­to by mediakritika.by

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