The eXile, a notorious English-language newspaper based in Moscow, is shutting down after investors and advertisers became frightened by a governmental inspection of the newspaper’s office, the biweekly publication’s editors said.
The eXile, launched in 1997 by American journalist Mark Ames, has enjoyed controversial popularity among expats and in certain circles of Moscow youth, providing Gonzo-style stories on Moscow’s politics and nightlife.
Chock-full of information on entertainment options in the Russian capital, The eXile became famous for its shockingly explicit style and provocative content.
“The paper is dead,” Mark Ames, The eXile’s chief editor, said in a recent interview with Korrespondent magazine, Kyiv Post’s Russian-language sister publication.
Ames said four inspectors from the Federal Service for Mass Media, Telecommunications and the Protection of Cultural Heritage visited The eXile’s office this month. He said the inspectors complained that the newspaper mocks Russian traditions and culture.
The Russian authorities simply dislike what The eXile writes about, Ames said.
No one in the government demanded that the eXile stop publication, but the newspaper’s investors withdrew their money, ending the newspaper’s 11-year run, editors said.
“News of their (officials’) visit had our investors fleeing instantly,” Yasha Levine, an eXile editor, wrote in his blog on June 11.
Following the investors’ withdrawal, The eXile’s team launched a “Save The eXile” fundraising campaign, asking for donations to continue with their website.
Eduard Limonov, a scandalous Russian politician and eXile columnist, said international media have traditionally enjoyed greater freedom than the Russian press. “What happened in The eXile’s office might signal that this will be over,” he said.
Although the paper made a mark for poking fun at Kremlin politics and the excesses of Russian life, its raunchy style and rude remarks about Russian women and culture may have actually triggered the government inspection, journalists said.
“Their chief editor said he wanted to make a South Parkstyle newspaper. The difference is that, in South Park, Americans and Canadians laugh at the U.S. and Canada themselves, but in this case they laughed at Russians. Quite tough. Just like a white person laughing at an aborigine,” said Vitaliy Portnikov, a Ukrainian journalist who has been working in Russia for many years.
The eXile’s story might continue, but obituaries are already being written.
“The story of The eXile is the story of an earlier, preboom Moscow, before gourmet supermarkets and sushi restaurants sprouted on every corner,” Owen Matthews, Moscow bureau chief for Newsweek magazine, wrote in an opinion piece, “End of The eXile Era,” for the Moscow Times on June 20.
“The eXile was born in a place that was dark, vibrant and absolutely compelling. The money, the sin and the beautiful people — it was doomed, apocalyptic and transiently beautiful. The incandescent energy of the pretty, deluded party kids whom the paper wrote about could have lit up this blighted country for a century if channeled into anything other than selfdestruction and oblivion. They were indeed strange and savage times, to borrow a phrase from U.S. author and journalist Hunter S. Thompson. And Mark Ames and Matt Taibbi were their greatest chroniclers,” Matthews wrote.
Dariya Orlova can be reached at [email protected] or 4964563, ext. 1105.
