Preparing Independent Russian Media for the 21'' Century:

Final Report on Cooperative Agreement 118-A-00-97-00274-00, December 2000 page 20
As the table indicates, different NPI regional centers developed particular areas of
interest. NPI/Moscow devoted special attention to economics, human rights, and
international and nuclear issues. NPI/St. Petersburg also focused on human rights and
international issues, while NPUNovosibirsk focused on economic and cultural issues.
NPI/Nizhny Novgorod organized frequent discussions of media issues. NPI branches in
Yekaterinburg and Samara both focused heavily on current political, economic, and
social issues in their regions, while NPIISamara also held frequent briefings on cultural
issues.
Journalists from throughout Russia constantly told NPI that access to varied and
reliable information is a key obstacle to media development in Russia. "One of the most
sharply felt problems at present," wrote Gennady Malyshev of Kirishi in Leningrad
Oblast in July 2000, "is obtaining information. Whenever I turn to the administration for
information on something that I would like to write about, they simply refuse to give it to
me. This seems to me even more frightening than the economic situation, because there
is no point in publishing or reading papers if we are not able to provide accurate
information." Journalists with access to NPI branches benefited from direct access to
Russia's newsmakers, community leaders, and others.
In order to provide the same benefits for journalists in regions where NPI did not
operate branches, NPI also developed an initiative to transcribe the most important of its
Moscow briefings and distribute this material nationally and internationally via the
Internet. By the end of the Cooperative Agreement, NPI reached its target of 8-1 0
transcripts per week, available in their entirety and free of charge on the NPI Web site
(http://www.nvi.m). Regional journalists expressed their gratitude for the transcripts,
which provided information otherwise not available. The response of Pave1 Ponomarev,
editor-in-chief of the Ros-Yug Information Agency in southern Russia, was typical: "Our
representative in Moscow works for other organizations as well and is not always able to
attend every event he would like to. This is why the transcripts of your press conferences
are invaluable to us. We believe that many other regional media share our point of
view."
For the purposes of this report, NPI's Press Center activities (at all of its
branches) have been divided into the following categories:
Public policy: briefings and press conferences on key policy issues and current
events, designed to enable Russian journalists to play an active role in the public
discussion of policy essential to a participatory democracy.
Civil society and human rights: briefings and press conferences designed to help
facilitate the development of civil society, such as briefings with NGO leaders,
briefings on under-reported issues, briefings on human rights.
Center for War, Peace, and the News Media -New York University Chapter 3: NPI Press Centers