Yuri Sinodov: "The RuNet is still not competitive"

Yuri Synodov ( sinodov ) is an online journalist specializing in IT. In an interview, he talks about IT journalism in RuNet, the principles of the work of online publications and whether fans can describe the match “Spartacus” more professional than a journalist.

Yuri, where did you start in network journalism?

It all started a few years ago, when, in parallel with MedMedia, I worked as a freelancer for Alex Exler - on projects Hostinfo.ru and Softkey.info . After a while, Andrei Annenkov accidentally found me, who needed an assistant in writing texts. With him, we later wrote texts for the magazines of Business Week and Profile - and then I ended up on Webplanet, where Lech Andreev invited me, at one time, the editor-in-chief of Medportala (MedMedia).

At first, “Webplanet” was tough, although the situation with traffic decline that remained after the previous wording was resolved: by the fall, attendance began to grow and gradually returned to the times of Deniskin.
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Does editorial policy greatly affect attendance?

This, of course, is one of the determining factors, especially in the thematic edition. If the editor offers the audience what she is not interested in, the publication quickly loses its influence and attendance. This is no novelty, it has always been.

Ruslan Kurepin, being in Masterkhost, managed “Hostinfo.ru”, but his goals there differed from those of “Webplanet”. As a result, he may not have completely coincided with the aspirations of the readers at the new place of work. There was a significant moment: the public demanded to write about the accident in the data center on the East, because of which Masterhost was badly damaged; in the end, only a few days later an article was written under the title “Nobody is insured against it . ” At that moment, I thought that the editors were not giving exactly the content that the audience would like, but I could not assume that in the end I would end up on Webplanet.

The editorial policy of "Webplanet" can be identified in a couple of phrases?

“Writing what people are interested in” is simple.

We were somewhat at odds with Andreev in our views on what was interesting for the audience. For example, he is against writing about dinosaurs (Mail.ru, Yandex, Google, etc.); I do not really understand, because these companies operate in our market, they are widely known. But in principle, each of us wrote about what he wanted — and we didn’t particularly argue on these topics.

For the most part, as mentioned above, editorial policy is determined by personality. When the ways of Kryuchkov and Webplanet dispersed and his materials, which were often provocative, “confluent” in nature, disappeared, the audience noticed this. It is always bad when a person who knows how to extract it leaves the publication that publishes “acute” information. But at the same time it may interfere with work. When I tried to communicate with one of our “big” advertisers on RIFE, he said: “Webplanet? I went away from here ”- and no further conviction that I am from the new editorial staff, no one left from the old one, did not lead to anything.

Now you can say that you have finished with “Webplanet”?

With “Webplanet” I finished back in April. Just now, Lehi Andreeva had such a situation that he asked me to “hold the steering wheel”. The conditions were quite mild, I didn’t need much from me - why not help.

You have written a lot over the past 2 weeks.

No, actually. A standard writing of a news note should not take more than 15-30 minutes, this is a normal time for an employee of Lenta.ru , for example. I do not understand why the industry press has to write longer.

If you count, I didn’t write too much - 16 notes in 10 days, less than two per day is obtained. I can more.

What is your relationship with Lenta.ru?

They give me the Internet and workplace. Just working at home is not entirely comfortable: you are constantly distracted by some household chores; in the office this is not.

Not yet decided to retrain or will you remain an online journalist?

There is no secret - I make, conditionally speaking, my “Webplanet”, with a different name, on a different domain, with different owners. That is, “Vebplanetu”, what I would have done on the site of the chief editor.

When will the launch - I do not know, it was originally planned in May, no matter how funny. Now there are a circle of people from whom I can order texts. In general, I can write news alone, but I will have to buy big materials. Although not sure that long texts are in demand on the Internet: the more the text, the less it is read. The people of Niasilivaet many letters.

Every day there are enough more and more websites in RuNet that position themselves as IT publications. Is this a normal trend?

The need for diversification is increasing, thematic publications are becoming popular. At one time, there was the "Evening Internet" by Anton Nosik, it was quite a normal IT edition. But if it is released now, then the VI audience will be completely incomprehensible.

The market is growing, the volume of tasks that people perform on it is increasing. Where one publication was enough 5 years ago, now there may be ten. Already you can make publications about online advertising, online media. There are already at least two editions of search engine optimization.

At the same time there is practically no competition. In the same “Medmedia”, which essentially included two similar publications about medicine, the audience overlapped by 10%. RBC Daily, for example, was partly created as a competitor to Kommersant and Vedomosti. But RBC initially already had an audience - those who were supposed to read all the press, claiming to be business, and the rest were already the “personal” audience of RBC, which was somehow transferred to the new website or newspaper and had the opportunity to read the news not only on the site, but also in the morning in a coffee shop.

By creating a publication equivalent to the existing one, one can expect that a portion of the audience will overlap: these are fans who will walk and read everything in a row. Runet is still not competitive and here you can do anything. If you know how to make money on your audience, then - no problem; the only question is whether there is enough money for existence.

Can an IT edition be profitable?

Denis Kryuchkov once said that “Webplanet” at the time of his departure brought in $ 10–12 thousand per month. Even if you make payments to the authors in the white, it turns out that the salary sheet to the authors, the most expenditure part, was more than $ 6 thousand. With this money you can make quite a decent industry publication.

In the minimal case, such a publication is two people - the main one and the assistant, while the second one should be able to replace the first one in case of illness, maintaining the necessary rate of release of materials.

Is it hard to work with freelancers?

When they are hired, they usually say "we can do this and that"; in the end, it turns out that they said this in good faith, but they lack inner motivation. Perhaps due to the fact that the salary is only once a month, and you have to work now. It’s almost impossible to check why a person isn’t working: maybe he’s really in trouble, he got sick or something else, and maybe it’s different. When working at home, a person very often finds internal excuses for not working at the moment.

In general, it is quite possible to create an office somewhere in the region, to plant there a couple of people who are quite competent to be able to collect information for publication. But these should be either ideal people, or they should have a tight time frame during which they should close their work tasks.

That is, do not need to attend press conferences, communicate with the right people, who mostly live in Moscow?

I do not know, I rarely go to the press conference.

There are interesting industry events: in the spring - KIB, RIF, RIT, eTarget; followed by a big-very big pause, and in November, a conference on search engine optimization. At these conferences, new contacts and contacts appear. An employee costs a maximum of $ 400-500, i.e. about $ 2,000 a year for everything; This amount is quite feasible for an online publication. Taking into account the fact that journalists may not be paid for accommodation, if they have a place to spend the night in Moscow, the costs of delegating an employee are generally a penny.

For a journalist, the main thing is to have a notebook: you write down all the events there in a day, you come to the editor and write. Next time will go another.

This is a matter of life position. I know a lot of journalists who live in Moscow, but they have zero contacts, they don’t know which questions should be asked and to whom. Why do they have problems in their work? Obviously not because they are far from Moscow. So living in the capital is a good help, but not the main thing.

The same Rutube - it is made in Orel. The producer of the tuganbaev service , Askar Tuganbaev, is in Moscow, but he is a TV man , and we all have television in the capital. They would not have found Orlovsky TV man during the day with fire, but it cannot be said that the presence of Muscovite Tuganbaev is the most important factor in the survival of Rutube.

"People's Journalism", crowdsourcing - topics that have been actively discussed lately - what is your attitude to these concepts?

Imagine that a football match Spartak - Real is being held, to which 80.000 people came. It's cold, many of them have snot running from their nose - and in the warm press center Maslachenko sits, talks about his fighting youth, commenting on what is happening on the field from time to time. Next to Maslachenko sits a journalist who went to Tarasovka in the morning, to the base of “Spartak”, together with the team arrived at the stadium, taking an interview with the coach and a couple of players. The question is: can any of the 80,000 snotty “Crowdsourcers” write material comparable in quality to the work of that journalist?

Quantity does not develop into quality, unfortunately. A person who is somehow not interested in work (for example, financially) cannot do it better than a professional. Journalism works by simple and clear rules, but for their implementation it is necessary to make some effort. In the "crowd" there is no stimulation for this.

There are many articles, interviews, where the opinion is expressed that the blogosphere will eat professional journalism. But again - there is a case in point: Sasha Ivyushchev once read a short news on the Kamchatka earthquake on the Echo of Moscow website, got into the search for Yandex on blogs and found a post in the blog of a resident of Kamchatka, where he writes about that "the walls began to shake at home", 30 seconds after the start of the earthquake. Plyushchev immediately concludes: “Here! This is an example of the fact that soon blogs are getting everyone! ”- despite the fact that the blogger has 30 readers, i.e. Only 30 people found out about this, and Plushev himself found this message only through a search engine after learning about the event on the media website.

The Internet is growing, blogs have a growing number of readers. The Goblin website has attendance, which some “smudgees” have to dream about - but it only says about the number of blog readers and nothing else. The media still remains the nodal points that bring together heterogeneous information, while blogs often simply report an event, and that is irregular. Information comes from journalists who go to different events, know what to ask and how to submit it. A blogger often doesn’t even understand what he is writing: I have repeatedly had situations where I could make a news or article out of a couple of words that someone wrote on a blog.

For information, therefore, you need some kind of search engine tool. Does the media fail to become a collector of information, including from blogs?

Blogs remain only one of the objects of "study" for the media. If a crowd of Moldovans begins to demand normal working conditions at the Don-Stroy facilities and the media writes about this, then this will not mean that Moldovans are creating a media policy. Similarly, Brad Fitzpatrick, having reported on his blog about leaving SixApart , did not become a journalist: he just gave journalists information that he was leaving.

In addition, the necessary unity of information. Reading Digg , I personally understand that different people form its content, but in the minds of most readers of such “collectors” a “non-contact” arises due to the heterogeneity of the presentation; it confuses a person - and he goes to where everything is smoother and there is no need to think so much.

I now have a fairly informative LiveJournal, but I am still a journalist and my blog is essentially a media outlet. If Putin has a blog where he will write what he did yesterday with Condoleezza Rise, instead of informing the public about it through the Kremlin pool of journalists, then this blog will be quoted by the media, but the balance of power between the media and the blogosphere will not change.

Of course, the blogosphere has influenced the media and the Internet in general: it provides the ability to react quickly to events. But the texts in the blogosphere are often not professional.

Are there enough professionals now? Professional journalists?

Well, there is one - I (smiles) .