“We worked out our own”: the Meduza edition lost half of the Russian audience and cut costs by 40%

The editors of Meduza have published their annual report for 2021, including preliminary results of recent months in the descriptive part.

As it turned out, after being recognized as a foreign agent in April 2021, she lost 80% of advertising revenue.

Meduza founder Galina Timchenko wrote that “the April events were one of the most serious crises” for her media. 

However, 2022 has become even more challenging for the company.

“Military censorship was introduced in the country ... punishments for calls to war and discrediting the army,” writes Galina Timchenko, co-owner of the Medusa Project, in an annual report for the Latvian authorities.

“Under these conditions, the company was forced to evacuate more than 20 journalists from Russia.”

On March 3 this year, the website and mobile version of Meduza were blocked in Russia.

In its statement, Roskomnadzor explained that it imposed restrictions on the resource due to calls for riots, extremism, and participation in illegal actions. 

Entry into the peak

Due to the blocking, Meduza began to rapidly lose its audience.

Only from September to November, the resource lost 23% of visitors, calculated RT using the SimilarWeb statistics service.

So, in November, the site was visited 35 million times, while in September the monthly audience was 46 million users.

The largest share of visitors is still made up of readers from Russia, but their number is steadily declining - by an average of 25% every month.

As a result, the site sank 2.5 times in the rating of Russian-language media - it fell from 181st place to 333rd. 

The outflow of readers and difficulties with transactions from Russia abroad significantly affected the income of Meduza, which accepted many donations from readers - they accounted for a significant share of its income.

The editors had to turn on the economy mode and cut the previous budget by 40%, according to documents obtained by RT.  

“After the imposition of Western financial sanctions, all payments from Russia (including donations and advertising revenue) were completely stopped,” the Medusa Project’s annual report published by the Latvian Register of Legal Entities says. 

Looking for capital

To compensate for the losses, Meduza launched a crowdfunding program for a European audience, but did not get even half of what the Russians listed.

“The organization launched a crowdfunding campaign in the West, asking readers of the English version of the site to help the publication,” the report says.

“As a result, we were able to replenish less than half of the regular donations that previously came from Russian-speaking readers.”

Now, the document says, the editors have had to focus on international grants. 

“The company does not yet see an opportunity to restore its monetization model and relies on donations from readers and grants from international organizations that support independent journalism,” the document says. 

What is happening at Meduza is called an "emergency."

As RT found out, the publication was forced to seek additional support from its sponsors and negotiate the restructuring of old loans.

Now the total debt of the Medusa Project has grown from €184.9 thousand to €579.5 thousand. 

attack on their

RT asked Ekaterina Mizulina, head of the Safe Internet League (LBI), a member of the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation, to assess the state of affairs at Meduza.

The LBI enforces online laws and is committed to protecting children from harmful content.

This non-profit organization regularly drew the public's attention to Meduza's publications. 

“The media resources of the publication are included in the register of banned sites based on the decision of the Prosecutor General’s Office, so they are not available to Russian users.

Nevertheless, the publication continues to spread disinformation and outright lies about our country,” says Ekaterina Mizulina.

“For example, in the summer of this year, the publication spread a blatant, in our opinion, fake about 17 million allegedly thrown votes in the elections to the State Duma.”

Also on russian.rt.com “It came as a surprise to ordinary employees”: Meduza was included in the list of foreign media agents

Meduza's neighbors on the opposition spectrum, Roman Badanin's publication Proekt***, added their portion of criticism regarding the editorial activities of the Riga portal.

After reviewing 150 Meduza publications predicting the dismissal of key Russian officials or significant reshuffles in Russian government, The Project concluded that 90% of Meduza’s policy department’s predictions did not come true: in terms of absolute numbers, only eight turned out to be correct out of 65 predictions.

On this basis, the journalists of the Project concluded that Meduza's political journalism was of low quality, an event hitherto unheard of in the friendly camp of the liberal media. 

“The media influence of this resource on the Russian-speaking audience has fallen sharply,” Mizulina told RT.

“People are rejected by unreliable materials and falsifications, there is some fatigue from fakes.”

Therefore, with a high probability, the head of the LBI continues, in the near future, Western curators will cut funding for editorial offices or completely stop cooperation. 

“Foreign sponsors are actively abandoning the old channels of communication and are trying to redirect financial flows to the promotion of new provocative projects,” Mizulina notes.

“Foreign agent Meduza has done its job.”

Also on russian.rt.com On the way to Khodorkovsky: former editor-in-chief of the Proekt publication Roman Badanin is looking for new sponsors

In turn, the liberal media, in the face of an outflow of audience and a crisis of ideas, are forced to compete more and more fiercely for funding, notes political scientist Pavel Danilov.

It is precisely with this, in his opinion, that the criticism of the Project against Meduza is connected.

“Even loyal citizens see that Meduza and other pro-Western media that are trying to work to “build up the regime” in Russia are all about money,” says Danilov.

“If the audience believed them, they would find a way to fill their budget.”

* Mass media recognized as a foreign agent by decision of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation of 04/23/2021.

** Roman Sergeevich Badanin was included in the register of persons acting as a foreign agent by the Ministry of Justice on 07/15/2021.

*** "Project Media" (Project Media, Inc.) is an organization whose activities are recognized as undesirable on the territory of the Russian Federation by decision of the Prosecutor General's Office dated July 15, 2021.