Fired Russian Journalist Runs News Website in Exile

A year after she was fired as editor of one of Russia's most popular news websites for running afoul of the authorities, Galina Timchenko has decamped to Latvia and launched a new site to keep the flame of Russian independent media alive.

Meduza, published since last October out of a newsroom in Riga, offers an alternative to Russia's stridently nationalist state-controlled media and the remaining independent news sources that, Timchenko said, are deferential to the authorities out of fear.

Russian media have "totally forgotten the profession's principles ... that a reporter should be uncomfortable for everyone,'' Timchenko told Reuters in an interview in Meduza's newsroom.

"The authorities will always try to occupy as much space as possible,'' she said. "Media should stand at the front saying: "No, we are guarding [people's] interests and you won't be allowed to go any further."''

With a staff of 23 people based in Riga and Russia, Meduza publishes on a website and a mobile phone app, and is already racking up 2.5 million unique visitors a month. Timchenko's aim is to double that audience within a year.

A former editor of the Russian business daily Kommersant, Timchenko took over as editor-in-chief at the Russian news website lenta.ru more than a decade ago. Its mixture of political and social news helped make lenta.ru one of the most clicked-on websites in Europe.