Soon after Russia’s open invasion of Ukraine on 24 February, Russian authorities started blocking media outlets to suppress independent coverage of the war. This move not only impacted these organisations’ business models, mainly due to the drop in advertising revenue, but also limited financial perspectives for any new media initiatives that would want to report independently on the war and its consequences.

Media creators therefore had to come up with other solutions to remain financially afloat. The Fix looks at solutions launched by two Russian media outlets: Bumaga, which has been on the media scene for ten years, and Novaya Gazeta.Europe, which was established in the first months of the all-out invasion.

Bumaga – a VPN service, merchandise and more

The independent St Petersburg newspaper Bumaga has lost over 90% of its advertising revenue after getting blocked, and is nowadays limited to ads in the newspaper’s Telegram channel, says newspaper’s commercial director Maria Rzaeva. (Telegram remains available in Russia, as opposed to Bumaga’s website and other Western social platforms).

After Bumaga got blocked, some clients refused to keep buying ads as they were afraid of getting punished by the authorities for working with a blocked publication. For the same reason, some clients refused to cooperate in Bumaga’s events. It is mainly smaller Russian companies with offers for educational courses or recreational activities that are willing to pay for Telegram ads these days.

Facing these financial struggles, Bumaga came up with several alternative revenue streams. One of them is their own VPN (virtual private network) service, which has become an essential tool in Russia if you want to access the ever-increasing lists of blocked websites and services (not only independent media but also Facebook or Instagram). It is sometimes also needed for those who left Russia if the countries they moved to have blocked websites of Russian institutions and services.

Bumaga’s VPN service was developed at the start of the war by Rzaeva’s colleague Dmitry Sobolev. He proposed it to Bumaga’s Friends Club, a membership community launched in 2020, which offers perks such as networking opportunities, exclusive Telegram chats and newsletters. Alongside donations, it is an important contributor to Bumaga’s overall revenue.

“It immediately became clear that there was a demand for the service,” she says. As a result, they started charging a fee (2-4 euros per month, depending on the subscription option) to cover the cost of the VPN’s server. Now their VPN is one of the products they actively offer to their readers and the income of the VPN subscriptions represents about 15-17% of Bumaga’s revenue in Russia.

Apart from a VPN service, Bumaga also launched a merchandise line called Svoboda mne k litsu, which could loosely be translated as “Freedom suits me”, which brands everything from T-shirts to candles and cakes.

“When the war started, they blocked the website, and the editorial office began to get a lot of gifts and support offers, both from individuals and small local businesses. We received flowers, cakes, cosmetics, so many things,” Rzaeva recalls.

Bumaga was also contacted by their long-term partners, a PR agency called Doing Great PR, and together they launched an online merchandise store. Now they are preparing the merch’s third edition, which they expect in October and November to contribute about 10-12% to Bumaga’s total income in Russia.

In the future, they also want to sell media management consulting services to large companies, as well as to monetise their urban landscape exploration app PaperApp. They are testing the latter option in Georgia, where some of Bumaga’s team this July launched a new media outlet called PaperKartuli.

Novaya Gazeta.Europe – a membership club, partnerships with Western advertisers

Novaya Gazeta.Europe, in contrast with Bumaga, is a Russian-language media outlet launched after the start of the invasion and registered in Riga, Latvia. It was created by former journalists of the prominent Russian independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta who left Russia due to threats, says Mikhail Komin, the newspaper’s development director.

The newspaper was launched in April and blocked by the Russian communications regulator Roskomnadzor only nine days afterwards. Although by that time Novaya Gazeta.Europe had only relied on donations, the blocking affected the traffic of the website, and shattered the idea of securing an income from advertising. This is one of the reasons why they started developing an English version of their website, with which they eye advertising contracts with European or American partners, Komin notes.

The newspaper at the moment would not be able to operate without the financial support given by institutions such as the JX-Fund, the European fund for journalism in exile, he notes. Despite that, about 30% of the paper’s income comes from Friends of Novaya Gazeta.Europe, an association established by three Swiss citizens who wanted to support the old Novaya Gazeta journalists in Europe. Memberships are aimed at individuals, institutions and corporations and are subjected to a yearly fee.

Novaya Gazeta.Europe was eager to embrace the initiative, Komin notes, since its journalists were considering developing a financial model based on a “club” membership. More specifically, they aimed at a model in which “club” members would get additional content beyond the website, on which the content would remain free for all.

The main target audience for the association are European and US citizens, he adds, and this is why the Novaya Gazeta.Europe’s editorial team tries to mainly promote it through the newspaper’s English-language social networks.
By the end of the year they also want to offer some additional products to the newspaper’s supporters, Komin adds. Similar to Bumaga, they want to launch their own VPN service, called VPNovaya.

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How independent Russian media seeks new revenue sources in times of severe censorship