The editors of Expert magazine have lost access to the site: Roskomnadzor commented on the situation

“The founder is going through bankruptcy proceedings”

The editorial team of one of the best business magazines in Russia, Expert, has lost access to the site. Journalists who have been publishing the publication for the last 28 years are at a loss. But readers are even more shocked.

“Bring back your favorite magazine!” they write on social networks, and compare what happened to a raider takeover.

Meanwhile, on the website expert.ru there is an announcement that the magazine “is changing, but high standards of journalism and balanced, unbiased expert analysis will remain unchanged.” True, all this is written with spelling errors…

A MK columnist looked into what happened to the publication beloved by many.

To begin with, it is worth saying that the Expert magazine is a quality press – it is designed for an educated reader who is interested in business news (as can be understood by the name). The media has always had its own audience that trusts it. And that’s – wait a minute – about 2.5 million readers. The publication owes this success primarily to its journalistic team and editorial policy. As the readers themselves write, they liked the magazine because no one threw mud at anyone in its materials, the information was objective, it was presented in an interesting and accessible language.

But about four years ago, the media holding was subjected to bankruptcy proceedings for debts to VEB. It was expected to be completed this November. For non-specialists, bankruptcy is tantamount to the death of the magazine. But no. In accordance with the law, the editorial team receives a Media Certificate, which allows them to continue working. However, even before the end of the procedures, very strange things happened.

But in order. There are three main assets of any publication: a domain name, a logo and a media certificate. VEB has already taken the first two through certain subsidiaries. But the last (most important), according to the law, should have gone to the editors. Without the permission of the collective, it seems that nothing can be done with it – neither liquidate nor transfer.

On October 14, Roskomnadzor unexpectedly announced the liquidation of the media certificate. At the same time, there were no warnings to the publication, and it itself never violated anything.

On the Expert website, unknown people (hired by VEB managers) began publishing their news on October 14, and the entire archive simply disappeared.

“Where did everything go? What nonsense happened? – they write on social networks and read it. “The expert has become a part of my life. I read the web version and telegram channel daily. On the road or to the airport I always took the printed version. It has become a tradition.”

“What happened to the site? Why were we deprived of the opportunity to read familiar content?” There are already about hundreds of similar comments. People believe that their right to access information has been violated.

“That’s right, we no longer have access to the site,” says Expert editor-in-chief Tatyana Gurova. – Today the owner of the domain name switched the site to his server. For us, this is both a sad and strange situation. There were agreements that the entire team would continue to work. But for some reason they are broken. The editors consider everything that happened as a violation of its legal rights. Journalists are outraged and will contact Roskomnadzor with a request to sort it out.

Meanwhile, the editors of MK promptly received a comment from Roskomnadzor:

– The founder of the media, which owned the family of Expert magazines, is going through a bankruptcy procedure that has lasted several years. As part of this procedure, the bankruptcy trustee appointed by the court, in accordance with all legal procedures, filed an application to terminate the activities of the publications. After this, the new legal entity applied to Roskomnadzor to register these media outlets.

The sets of documents submitted to Roskomnadzor fully complied with the current Law “On the Mass Media,” which made it possible to complete the appropriate registration actions.”

Interestingly, Expert journalists decided not to give up and transferred all their materials to the website monocle.ru.