Preparing Independent Russian Media for the 21'' Century:

Final Report on Cooperative Agreement 1 18-A-00-97-00274-00, December 2000 Page 2
Media Business Development Service (MBDS)
NPI established its MBDS in order to help Russia's regional newspapers achieve
and maintain financial viability - and therefore independence from local authorities and
self-interested "sponsors." NPI organized on-site and long-distance management
consulting, conferences, publications, and a range of outreach activities, including:
Intensive, on-site management consulting for 84 newspapers, leading in most cases
to substantial increases in advertising revenue and circulation, and in a number of
cases to outright financial independence;
Legal consultations to 250 newspapers in 55 Russian cities and training of 150 more
media professionals;
20 publications on newspaper management, now used throughout Russia;
3 national conferences and an active listserv of 880 regional publishers.
MBDS was particularly active in the aftermath of the August 1998 financial
crisis: "I am convinced that if not for the National Press Institute the independent regional
press would not have survived.. .." wrote Nail Bashirov, an independent newspaper
publisher in Astrakhan.
School of Journalism and Media Management
NPI inaugurated its School as an umbrella for the diverse educational activities it
had conducted since 1992. During the Cooperative Agreement, the School organized:
Over 125 training seminars and roundtables outside of Moscow on journalism,
media management, and media technologies attended by over 2400 regional media
professionals;
15 training courses in Moscow with 300 mainly regional participants;
A virtual library of materials on journalism and media management on the NPI Web
Service
Journalists and media managers voted with their feet: even with an extremely
difficult financial situation, newspaper publishers sent their staff to NPI events at their
own expense and were prepared to pay for the courses.
Center for Cyberjournalisrn (CCJ)
NPI's CCJ, created to teach and promote the effective application of new
technologies to journalism, accomplished the following during the Cooperative
Agreement period:
Over 105 seminars and conference sessions with an aggregate attendance of over
2100;
Center for War, Peace, and the News Media -New York University Chapter 1. Executive Summary