Meduza is an aggregator of news, texts and podcasts in Russian that are selected manually, unlike the automatic rankings of Yandex News. The main criterion for publication of content is the relevance and reliability of the information, not the status of the source. Also, Meduza creates its own materials. The site includes five main topics, and has no sections or columns. One of the formats of the publication is the analysis of complex issues using cards, similar to the American project vox.com.
History
In 2014 Galina Timtchenko was fired from her job as chief editor at Lenta.ru. and launched the new webpage Meduza in Oktober 2014. Several former journalists of Lenta.ru joined the new online site. Timchenko told Forbes that the decision to base Meduza in Latvia was made since "right now, establishing an independent Russian language publishing house in Latvia is possible, while in Russia it is not." Moreover, Timtchenko stated: “We understood that in Russia, most likely, they would not let us work". Russian businessman and former oligarchMikhail Khodorkovsky and telecommunications magnate Boris Zimin had been considered as passive investors; however, they parted ways "for strategic and operational reasons". Because of economic reasons, she and her partner at Amond & Smith Ltd Sergey Nazarkin, based Meduza in Latvia. In February 2015, the website also launched an English-language version. In January 2016, founder and CEO Galina Timchenko handed over the role of chief editor to her deputy Ivan Kolpakov. In November 2018, Kolpakov announced his resignation after a sexual harassment scandal. He was reinstated as chief editor on March 11, 2019. In August 2018 Meduza started a partnership with BuzzFeed, an American site. The partnership includes to publish each other’s materials, share experiences and publish joint investigations. In 2019 Meduza started English podcast: „“The Naked Pravda” highlights how Meduza’s top reporting intersects with the wider research and expertise that exists about Russia.“
Structure
Meduza is run by a team of around 20 journalists who resigned from their jobs at Lenta.ru following Galina Timchenko's unexpected removal from her post by the website's owner and, the oligarch Alexander Mamut. There are no Latvian journalists in the project. Since March 2015 Medusa have published daily news called “Evening Meduza”.
Audience
Three months after opening Meduza recorded 1.3 million monthly readers of its internet publication. In 2017 Meduza recorded 7.5 million per month and 2 million followers on social media.
Censorship
According to Timchenko, Meduza will not only serve as an aggregator, but also produce its own content. Thus, it aims to fill a market niche which exists due to "a long list of forbidden topics which Russian media do not raise for various reasons—due to direct and indirect censorship." The day after it was launched, Meduza was blocked in Kazakhstan, probably due to an article about the city ofOskemen. The site has also been blocked in Uzbekistan. The reasons for this are unclear. Meduza has installed technical measures to circumvent censorship with their mobile apps. In June 2019, Meduza journalist Ivan Golunov was arrested by Russian police for drugs offences. Colleagues and friends of Golunov said they believed the charges to be fabricated, motivated by his investigations into corruption. Following a public outcry, Golunov was released, with five former police officers, who were fired, later arrested.
