‘Repackaging the emptiness’: How Russian regional journalism adapts to the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the role news organizations play in disseminating information and shaping public response to the crisis. This study adopts an ecological approach in examining Russian regional journalists’ adaptations to the pandemic. Based on in-depth interviews, the study found that a worsened economic situation has increased dependence on state subsidies. Journalists avoided questioning authorities’ response to COVID, with some publishing government information and others focusing on practical tips for readers.

Introduction

Although media coverage of COVID-19 waned during 2021 and 2022, journalists around the world have continued to serve as an important information bridge between medical science and society, and journalists have continued to shape societal perspectives on the virus (Pearman et al., 2021, p. 6). As with other citizens across the world, Russian citizens have been most likely to seek local information about the virus and vaccines (Hess & Waller, 2021; Shearer, 2020; “Webcast,” 2021); however, local journalists in Russia have found it highly difficult to provide this information. At each turn, they have been discouraged from reporting distressing facts about the outbreak, and these hindrances have been most evident at local news media that are dependent on the state for revenue and information.

Through qualitative in-depth interviews of journalists, this 2-year-long study examines responses by local newspaper journalists to both the pressure of the pandemic and to ongoing political-economic pressures. The study asks how regional journalists and their organizations have adapted to these external pressures as they seek to maintain control over their journalistic work and to produce meaningful journalism amid the COVID crisis. Among the relatively few studies that have examined journalists’ responses to the COVID crisis, most have focused on Western journalists and their responses to operational challenges for daily work such as physical isolation and lack of organizational support (e.g., Finneman & Thomas, 2021; Hoak, 2021; Libert et al., 2022; Simunjak, 2022). A few studies have analyzed responses to broader, more severe political-economic difficulties experienced in media systems outside of Western liberal free markets, but these have focused on national-level journalism (e.g., Bulut & Ertuna, 2022; Litvinenko et al., 2022; Saptorini et al., 2022). Our study fills a gap by examining regional-level journalists’ responses to the severe sort of challenges more likely to be experienced in a non-Western context, especially at the local level: Russia’s semiauthoritarian media environment and struggling economy have presented especially daunting challenges to resource-poor local-level journalists, and during COVID, risks to journalists’ personal health posed yet another challenge. Furthermore, health risk is an understudied dimension that will likely have growing relevance in a future of increasing health and environmental concerns. In our study, we focus on six newspapers in three regions in Russia to provide an understanding of newsroom policies and journalists’ practices that influenced the coverage during the pandemic, and how policies and practices may vary across the papers.

As this study shows, most local news media in Russia bend to their regional government’s will and report superficial news: “repackaging the emptiness,” in the words of one journalist we interviewed. However, there have been some differences in responses across the three regions and six newspapers we studied, and we shed light on these differences through an ecological perspective (Abbott, 1988; Lowrey & Sherrill, 2020). This framework helps us explain journalists’ motivation to adapt to varying, often severe problems as they also seek to maintain some control over their journalistic work.

A note about the choice of studying newspapers in our study: While TV generally is influential across Russia, newspapers are highly relevant in the study of Russian journalism at the local level. Only around 3% of viewers watch regionally produced TV, and while online and social media are growing in importance—and we do examine these in the study—internet access can be prohibitively expensive in some provinces (“Television in Russia in 2019,” 2020).

Literature Review

Hardships on Russian Regional Media During the Pandemic

In their need for information about COVID, local Russian audiences have been hindered by political and economic constraints on information. According to a Kennan Institute panel of Russian independent media managers, progovernment Russian media did not challenge medical officials’ practice of hiding the real numbers of COVID-19 infections and deaths (“Webcast,” 2021). A panelist noted that medical officials labeled as “fake news” any coverage that contradicted these false official claims and data (“Webcast,” 2021). In April 2020, Putin signed a law that punished the dissemination of contradictory information—so called “fake news”—with fines up to $25,000 or prison terms up to 5 years (Litvinova, 2020). Shortly after, the Alliance of Independent Regional Publishers reported that a local newspaper editor was fined for publishing the news that 1,000 local cemetery plots had been prepared for coronavirus victims (“ANRI zayavil o fakte vopiyushchego proizvola v otnoshenii portala ProUfu.ru,” 2020). In addition to local journalists, a number of nonjournalist social-media users who questioned official coronavirus data have been targeted by a special law enforcement unit within Russia’s Investigative Committee (Litvinova, 2020).

Yet, according to the Kennan Institute panelists, Russian citizens do have some appetite for truthful accounts. Russian news consumers who sought COVID information were more likely to turn to independent media than state-run media due to distrust of the state’s pandemic coverage, which initially downplayed the dangers of the virus and failed to explain government antivirus measures. Subscription revenue has grown because of readers’ interest in facts about the pandemic in their local areas, though this revenue is not nearly enough to offset ad revenue loss (“Webcast,” 2021).

Some of the problems facing local Russian journalists are similar to the problems faced by local news media in other countries. Globally, there has been a spike in audience interest in news during the pandemic, but this pressure for information has come at a challenging time for local media around the world, which are seeing declining ad revenue and strains on public funding while battling rampant disinformation about the virus (Tumiatti & Schiffrin, 2021). Yet, Russian local journalists and their outlets must travel a tougher road than most, having also suffered ongoing threats from government backlash and years of economic crisis during the post-Perestroika and Putin eras (Erzikova & Lowrey, 2020; Kiriya & Kachkaeva, 2011; Roudakova, 2017).

Russian regional journalists have taken substantial pay cuts and accepted delays in wage payments, and they have gone without critical “honoraria”—supplemental payments for producing stories to fill newspaper news holes. Journalists have become strongly dependent on honoraria (Erzikova & Lowrey, 2020). In the face of political-economic difficulties, Russian provincial news outlets have had to rely increasingly on government support, in the forms of both direct budgetary subsidies and information contracts that allow news outlets to cover activities of government officials (Erzikova & Lowrey, 2020). Consequently, the regional government largely sets the local news agenda (Dovbysh & Mukhametov, 2020). Government direction has been especially strong in smaller, poorer regional centers and cities where the state dominates the media landscape.

While the government dominates local newspapers and traditional news channels, they are also gaining control over increasingly important and widely used social media platforms such as Instagram and Russia’s VK (Litvinenko & Nigmatullina, 2020). Regional governments in the three provinces in this study have been direct players in the online space for almost a decade, and like other regions (Litvinenko & Nigmatullina, 2020), they have worked to coopt the social media environment, regularly disseminating the government’s point of view. The spread of misinformation through social media, from state sources and other sources has been rampant (Cinelli et al., 2020; Nisbet & Kamenchuk, 2021). This has posed yet another steep challenge to local journalists as they seek to provide accurate public information. According to a recent survey, 99 million Russians actively used social media platforms in January 2021, with VK (13%) and Instagram (10%) being most popular platforms for reading news (Statista, 2021). The majority of survey respondents (64%) thought the coronavirus was produced in a laboratory as a biological weapon, a belief that was popular among those whose main source of information was friends, relatives, and neighbors (73%); social media (67%); TV (65%); and internet publications (65%) (Levada-Center, 2021).

Journalists’ Response to Hardships During COVID: An Ecological Framework

While political and economic oppression has been severe, historically, these challenges may have also helped prepare Russian journalists for the difficulties of the COVID-19 crisis, and journalists have shown both weakness and strength during this crisis. During the pandemic, Russian regional journalists have mostly complied when facing government oppression, but there has been some deviance such as occasional dissent in social-media comments (Litvinenko & Nigmatullina, 2020). The variable mix of compliance with modest, sporadic deviance can be understood from within an ecological framework, an approach that has been used frequently in studies of journalists renegotiating professional boundaries in a changing, disrupted news “ecosystem” (Carlson, 2015; Hanitzsch & Vos, 2017). We adopt Liu and Emirbayer’s (2016) sociological definition of ecology: a theoretical social system of “interactional spaces with competing actors and fluid locations” (Liu & Emirbayer, 2016, p. 62) that emphasizes “adaptation of actors to their social environment” (Liu & Emirbayer, 2016, p. 64). Actions taken within ecologies emerge from microlevel interaction between social actors who themselves are responding and adapting to the shifting, interconnected spaces of their environment. As a result, social behavior in ecologies is variable and hard to predict (Abbott, 2016; Becker, 2008).

Behavior in such conditions is often reactive rather than proactive, with social actors seeking safe niche spaces rather than coordinating for change (Abbott, 2005a). By conceptualizing regional newspapers’ environments as niche positions within a wider system of uncertainly shifting political, economic, and social spaces, we can view regional Russian journalists’ responses as adaptive and survival-oriented. This behavior is consistent with Russian citizens’ historical tendencies to adapt, shelter, and survive rather than openly rebel in the face of hardship and oppression (Gudkov et al., 2009). From an ecological perspective, “continuing to survive is ultimately more consequential than securing clear boundaries in the face of dominant force [such as the government], and there are many ways [journalists] may adapt, gain footholds and carry on” (Erzikova & Lowrey, 2020, p. 53).

Abbott’s (1988) system of professions approach is a prominent ecological approach for studying behavior in threatened professions and occupations. It has been used frequently in studies of journalistic change (Carlson, 2015; Erzikova & Lowrey, 2009; Usher, 2016; Waisbord, 2013), and we adopt it here. According to Abbott (1988), occupational actors try to maintain “jurisdiction” over their work domain, and in our study, the work domain is local journalism, or the work of producing information that sheds light on local problems. Claims of jurisdiction over a work domain can be weakened by what Abbott calls objective conditions (or qualities). These can include oppressive structural forces such as political pressures, economic scarcity, and the pandemic. However, occupational actors try to adapt to such objective challenges and continue on by altering subjective qualities of their work. For example, they may alter the goals of their work, the “clients” they serve (e.g., journalists’ view of the audience), the values of their profession, or the criteria for professional success. Prior research has found evidence of Russian regional journalists altering their work goals in the face of objective political and economic pressures: for example, by retreating from public-service journalism to find safer havens (niche spaces) in providing bureaucratic information for bureaucrats, or in providing tips for readers’ everyday personal problems (Erzikova & Lowrey, 2010).

We expect, therefore, that regional Russian journalists, both in print and online, will seek to adapt to objective challenges in varied and unpredictable ways as they try to survive and continue on, but also remain relevant, maintain resources, and hold on to some measure of control (jurisdictional claim) over their work. The objective challenges of political and economic pressures are long-standing, but the pandemic presents additional challenges with unknown “subjective” responses. This study seeks to shed light on the following research questions:

• RQ1:How have regional journalists and their organizations responded to external “objective” pressures in a pandemic environment?

• RQ2:In what ways were the responses similar and different across the regions?

Method

Data were collected through semistructured in-depth interviews with journalists in three Russian provinces from February 2020 through February 2022. The six publications included in the study are legacy media that have been operating in the regions under study for at least 10 years. Pseudonyms for respondents, newspapers, and regions were used. We maintain anonymity because of journalists’ tenuous employment situations and an increasingly fraught political environment. For our research purposes, the identity of regions and papers is not at issue, as we focus mostly on research participants’ perceptions of political, economic, and cultural contexts and factors.

Sampling

Theoretical case-study sampling (Yin, 2009) was used, with newspapers chosen based on their varying dependence on government resources, an ecological factor likely to strongly influence decisions by news outlets and journalists, according to prior literature (Lowrey & Erzikova, 2010, 2018; Erzikova & Lowrey, 2020). The following newspaper organizations were included from Region A to provide comparison across the main forms of ownership: The Government, a biweekly paper that is fully subsidized from the regional budget; the Traditional, a weekly that is partially subsidized by the regional government, and the Private, a privately owned weekly that receives some funding from government contracts that prescribe coverage of government activities. To provide region-level comparison, one independent newspaper from a second region, Region B, is also included in the study, as are two privately owned publications in a third region, Region C. Regions B and C are more populous and more economically advanced than Region A, and their papers receive significant income from private advertising and subscriptions; however, these media consider city administrations and regional governments as their main advertisers. The selection of the particular papers from regions B and C represent convenience sampling: These were the papers offering access to researchers.

Using snowball sampling, both managers and staff at each paper were sought for interviews to gain variability in decision-making perspectives. Ultimately, 20 reporters and editors from these six regional newspapers agreed to participate in Zoom interviews: the editor and four staffers from the Government, the vice editor and three reporters from the Traditional and three staffers from the Private. From a Region B newspaper, an editor and a reporter participated in the study, and from Region C papers, two editors and four of their subordinates participated. The majority of participants were middle-aged, with at least 20 years of professional experience. Fourteen of 20 respondents were women. Only five had journalism degrees, while others majored in Russian language and literature, history, public relations (PR), and engineering.

Data Collection and Coding

Semistructured in-depth interviews were conducted in Russian from February 2020 through February 2022 by a bilingual speaker, and then translated into English for analysis. Zoom interviews lasted around 30 to 45 minutes, and each participant was interviewed at least twice. Participants signed institutional review board (IRB)-approved consent forms prior to interviews.

The interviews probed for insights to understand how regional journalists and their newspapers responded to challenges imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Questions were asked about organizational strategies to cover the pandemic, whether and how a new environment impacted the relationships with local authorities, and whether and how this health crisis changed work practices and routines of individual reporters.

The study’s data were collected through interviews. Website and social media content from the regions’ publications were used as prompts for interview questions, to help ground interviews in lived daily experiences during the data gathering. Examples from this content were used in illustrative ways throughout the study. Content was described or explicated in the findings only when (a) interview participants mentioned news content or social media content or shared their computer screens to point to specific content and when (b) researchers decided the content was important to understanding participants’ points, and the content was important to research goals and questions. Interviews were audio-recorded for further analysis, and participants signed IRB-approved informed consent forms prior to interviews.

While the process of coding interviews was inductive, it was assumed researchers “come to the field with presuppositions, questions and frameworks” (Burawoy, 1998). In our case, we came to the field looking for strategies for negotiating control over work amid challenges. A grounded theory approach was used in the coding. Interview transcripts were analyzed initially through open coding. Using a constant comparison method, codes were compared and contrasted, and eventually organized into more abstract categories (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016; Saldana, 2021). To aid trustworthiness of the data (Lincoln & Guba, 1985), differences in interpretation were discussed by the researchers in a “peer-review” process (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016, p. 249).

Findings

The following sections reveal how journalists and their newspapers in the three regions responded and adapted to common challenges—that is, the challenges of covering the pandemic amid political and economic pressures and the challenges from shifting newsroom work conditions amid the uncertainty of the pandemic. Findings are organized as a series of mini-case studies of each newspaper across the regions. Each case study examines (a) the paper’s coverage of the pandemic, and (b) the newsroom work situation. Responses by Region A newspapers and journalists are discussed first, followed by responses from regions B and C.

Region A: The Government Newspaper

The Government, the oldest newspaper in Region A, is the official organ of the regional government, which subsidizes the paper. In many ways, the paper’s progovernment response to the pandemic, in terms of news coverage, work practices, and journalists’ perceptions, is consistent with the paper’s position within the region. But we also see journalists paralyzed or brought to silence by the unfamiliar, disturbing personal effects from the virus and by an odd, conflicted institutional environment in which government spokespersons refer to medical workers as “heroes” while also disparaging medical workers who appeal for more resources—because such an appeal suggests the government has mismanaged the crisis. Following an initial surge in user interest about the virus, the Government’s social media users retreated into silence as the years unfolded.

Coverage of the Pandemic

An episode mentioned by participants who involved an independent vlogger in Region A during the height of the pandemic in spring 2020 illustrates the Government newspaper’s pandemic coverage and how journalists responded and adapted to shifting, uncertain external realities. The vlogger’s video, showing overcrowding and a lack of medical resources at the regional hospital, was narrated with a voice over: “A total mess at hospitals and the inability of bureaucrats to manage the crisis.” The video went viral. All but one reporter on the Government’s news staff said they took the vlogger’s message personally and felt offended. “He should have been less critical and more understanding in such trying times,” a senior reporter said. The Government staff responded by publishing positive stories framing doctors and nurses as “heroes” to offset the “damage done by the vlogger,” the senior reporter explained. Participants said the staff also adopted a strategy for pandemic coverage: “We are stronger than virus.” The one dissenting reporter commented on the staff’s ongoing contortions in the face of clear evidence of poor medical conditions, as they sought to support the position of the government on which they depend, financially: “The mad house continues,” she said. “Same agenda as always—how to say something without saying anything; how to turn facts upside down but without contradicting common sense too obviously.”

Two months later, a group of ambulance personnel criticized local authorities for failing to provide them with PPE (personal protective equipment), and this led to another viral outcry. However, interview participants indicated that the Government newspaper ignored this crisis, despite the video gaining thousands of daily views. By this point, many of the Government paper’s staff had contracted the virus, and as the dissenting reporter said, “Reporters were not as eager to advocate for [the regional] government after half of the newsroom got COVID and didn’t get adequate help.” While they conducted no critical reporting of the government in this case, neither did they actively defend the regional government’s image, according to participants. Eventually, it seems, the reporters’ personal experiences combined with empirical evidence of inadequate health care eroded their position as defenders of the government; they declined to battle with social media critics on the government’s behalf. Feelings of futility had crept in: “[Before the virus], people might have had terrible lives, but they still might hope that it can be improved,” said a reporter. “[Now] there is not an image of a brighter future.”

Newsroom Work Policy and the Pandemic

Between 2020 and 2022, the Government newspaper officially adopted remote work, but staffers continued to come to the newsroom, according to a senior reporter. Staff did not wear masks inside the offices, though there were efforts to physically distance. Reporters also continued to attend news conferences in person at the government building, where they wore masks while entering but barely covered mouths during news conferences. “You can’t breathe in that muzzle,” a Government reporter explained. While these behaviors were consistent with the government’s “stronger than the virus’ position, staffers’ decisions to work in the office reflected more complex motivations.” In part, reporters came to the office because they feared losing their jobs. “We are afraid of dying from starvation more than from coronavirus,” a reporter said. In part, reporters sought social connection and to escape isolating and distracting home life. “I can’t write at home,” one senior Government reporter explained. “I need a collective . . . I am motivated when I see people around me.” To reduce chances of contracting the virus, in 2021, the editor mandated that reporters report to the newsroom in shifts.

The Government paper was the most virtually social of the Region A publications, as the paper manages accounts on Facebook, Twitter, OK, and VK, according to interviewed participants. A social media manager said that interest in news about the pandemic rose in March and April of 2020, but user engagement was minimal even then. It was Government reporters who mainly “liked” the posts. Attempts to engage with readers via polls (e.g., “What are your strategies to deal with lockdown?”) were ignored. On Twitter, there were occasional retweets and likes, but users did not reply to COVID-19-related tweets.

Previous studies have shown that state-subsidized regional publications might use their social media accounts to deviate from the “party line” (e.g., Erzikova & Lowrey, 2020). Social media can encourage a more “fluid and dynamic” media ecology, providing not just alternative platforms for reporting, but opportunities for deviant messaging within online spaces provided for audience communication. Such deviance may be more likely when attention is low, as during the later months of the pandemic. According to a Government social media manager, Government news staffers had been using their personal accounts to “post subversive messages to the newspaper’s official accounts, and the boss pretended he was not aware.” A reading of the content attested to this use. A reporter wrote a story about a religious tour by air (крестный ход) to halt COVID-19: A group of Russian Orthodox priests prayed as they took a helicopter ride around the city in spring 2020. The reporter signed the story with a pseudonym, and when the story was posted on a newspaper social media account, she left a sarcastic comment about the procession using her real name. She also used her personal account to advise local residents to stay away from their neighbors who returned home from Moscow: “They are coming home and bringing COVID with them.” Such a post would have been forbidden on the Government paper’s official account, she said. Another reporter subtly commented on a story about the government’s effort to combat the virus by saying she enjoyed re-reading George Orwell’s Animal Farm during the pandemic.

Region A: The Private Newspaper

The Private is a privately and locally owned paper, and while it also receives revenue from the government through work-for-pay “contracts,” it aggressively seeks private revenue as well as some independence from the regional government. Its COVID coverage reflected these attempts at autonomy, particularly the way it adapted to the uncertain environment by finding a safe and popular niche. But the crisis also revealed a harsh capitalist side of the paper’s administration.

Coverage of the Pandemic

The Private did not participate in any regional government’s attacks on outspoken medical personnel, consistent with the fact that the newspaper did not receive direct subsidies from the regional budget. In the words of its reporters, “We don’t need to work off money (отрабатывать деньги) like the Government and Traditional do.” Among Region A’s newspapers, the Private stood out as the one publication that circumvented the government’s official virus statistics and promotional press releases. Instead, the newspaper followed its long-held tradition of assisting the “small man” in difficult situations by providing readers basic education on a variety of issues. The pandemic provided this more market-based paper with an opportunity to attract readers who were concerned about the crisis and sought solutions. During interviews, Private reporters shared their computer screens to discuss social-media content, revealing that the Private published stories that targeted daily practical matters about the pandemic: how COVID-19 patients can obtain free medication, advice on vaccination, how to stay active during the lockdown, specifics about distance (virtual) education, and practical information about testing. Adopting this niche, which was grounded in official information, allowed the paper to avoid conflict with the government and to connect with local readers—a sweet spot that helped Private journalists maintain control over journalistic work.

During interviews, a Private reporter shared that social-media connectedness between the newspaper and its audience was minimal. The Private has no website, and the paper’s social media accounts—Facebook and OK—contained mainly promotions of stories about COVID-19 that were published in the print edition. Story “likes” were produced by managers rather than readers or reporters.

Newsroom Work Policy and the Pandemic

The Private’s newsroom work policies also reflected the paper’s market and business orientation, according to the Private journalists. The Private’s owner immediately took financial advantage of the COVID crisis, announcing remote work and payment cuts. “The owner said he will pay only for three days a week,” said one reporter, “and anybody who doesn’t like his decision is free to leave.” The staff’s youngest reporter did leave. Other reporters stayed but had to increase efforts to earn money on the side. Two reporters reported to the office every day, but as with Government staff, these decisions were affected by the uncertain effects of the pandemic on daily life—to “get away from loud and demanding family,” as one of them said.

Region A: The Traditional Newspaper

The Traditional, launched as an independent newspaper 30 years ago, was nearly closed in 2015 due to financial hardship. According to Traditional management, the regional government rescued the publication by providing minimum subsidies. The vice-editor said officials’ self-interest was a factor in the paper’s survival: “They have to have a ‘kingdom’ [multiple news organizations] to justify their fat salaries.” According to Traditional management, during the pandemic, the regional government used the Traditional as a dumping ground for government press releases (e.g., statements that the governor met with local doctors) and publicity material from the pro-Kremlin party United Russia (e.g., party volunteers distributed free meals to older citizens during the lockdown). In addition to being posted on the website, some of these materials also appeared on the paper’s social media, VK and OK. But, Traditional management said, the regional government’s press service prepared most of the content exclusively for these social media, suggesting government cooptation of the Traditional’s accounts. The accounts themselves lacked transparency, providing no contact information for the Traditional and no links back to the website under posts. This left readers the false impression that both social-media groups were moderated by (unknown) city residents.

Coverage of the Pandemic

A Traditional reporter said its readers did not show strong interest in pandemic news:

None of our readers said, “Write more about the coronavirus.” Instead, readers ask for human-interest stories unrelated to COVID and general life tips like how to check if the amount on a utility bill is correct.

According to this reporter, the paper’s readers perceive the pandemic as an uncontrollable phenomenon, and so they “don’t care what any newspaper says about it.” Online traffic declined, with most continuing site views coming from struggling reporters at other outlets who were “fishing for news to steal” (so they could produce news content and get paid), according to the reporter.

In 2020, the reporter said distrust in government has increased during the pandemic and contributed to readers’ jaded views:

For 20 years, government has been destroying the health system in the country. Now when government says Russia created an anti-COVID vaccine superior to other vaccines and everyone should get it, people don’t believe it. They don’t believe government can do something to protect people.

Despite a perceived lack of readers’ interest in the topic, the Traditional kept covering the pandemic, mainly by publishing press releases by the governor’s office and the regional Ministry of Health, according to Traditional management. When the Government newspaper ignored the viral outcry of ambulance personnel and the government press service response (mentioned above), the Traditional picked up the baton, publishing a government press release that accused ambulance personnel of seeking cheap publicity. However, the Traditional’s support ended there because of resource scarcity. The vice editor explained why none of the Traditional reporters jumped on the topic and criticized the ambulance personnel: “We don’t have time for stories,” she said. “We have three reporters who mainly re-write press releases and do interviews with bureaucrats because we receive subsidies from the regional budget.” In short, the resource niche provided by the government led to only half-hearted support from the Traditional, which had only enough revenue for a passive day-to-day survival.

To “work off” the regional government’s subsidies, the Traditional editor said, the Traditional had to produce a certain number of government-required stories a month, with little benefit for citizens. For example, according to a senior reporter, in 2022, the paper published government safety measures for bus riders, but the editor said the measures were unworkable and, thus, nonsensical: “There isn’t any distance in a bus that residents ride to work.” Earlier, the paper interviewed the regional health minister and wrote an extensive report on a pandemic-related meeting in the regional government titled “The war on coronavirus continues.” However, news of “the war” did not spread far, according to the Traditional vice editor. For several weeks, newspaper kiosks were closed due to COVID restrictions, but the Traditional still kept printing and storing the issues in a warehouse. “Not printing would mean no subsidies and no wages,” the vice editor said.

During interviews, a Traditional reporter expressed over the newspaper’s management of social media. She said that COVID-related stories were posted randomly on the VK and OK accounts and had zero user engagement. As mentioned, both accounts failed to mention the ownership and/or any contact information. VK or OK social media users who stumbled upon the groups would likely not know the Traditional operated the accounts. She said this lack of transparency was motivated by a desire to distance the social-media content from the paper, given its government connections and funding—many of the posts were produced by the governor’s office. Again, we see the flexible use of social media in adapting to the uncertain pandemic environment. But social-media followers were still quite negative in the few comments they left under a few posts about United Russia.

Newsroom Work Policy and the Pandemic

A vice editor shared that the Traditional first downplayed the danger and continued in-office work, but after a few staffers got COVID, the decision was made to work remotely. However, the vice editor added, communication and coordination were poor, and after a few mishaps like failing to attend a governor news conference, the regional government mandated physical presence in the newsroom. Older staffers chose self-isolation and, thus, saved the Traditional‘s wage fund. The order to show up for work resulted in four staffers being hospitalized with a severe form of COVID-19 within 2 weeks (we note that Government newspaper staff were never formally required to work in the office—likely, because they had never failed to appear when “summoned.”).

When a new variant, Omicron, hit Russia in late of 2021, the Traditional asked the authorities to switch to a remote mode again. Authorities denied the request, though vaccines were mandated. The vice-editor commented: “Because of the danger of being infected, we feel like we go to war when we go to newsroom.”

Region B and C Newspapers

Three additional newspapers—one in Region B and two in Region C, both more populous and economically developed than Region A—were included in the study, and all were privately owned legacy publications with reasonably extensive circulation and social media presence. Despite the presence of greater ad revenue in these regions, most ad revenue came from the local government, and this portion increased during the pandemic. These papers also received temporary government contracts though they were not subsidized directly from a budget line. While contracts obligate the news outlet to cover certain government activities, direct subsidies obligate news outlets to full-time PR duties for local governments. In short, the papers inhabited a local niche supported by both commercial and government resources, and their responses to the pandemic were consistent with their partial dependence on their regional governments.

Coverage of the Pandemic

Regions B and C newspapers adopted an impartial approach to covering the coronavirus. While they did not actively promote the government line, they relied heavily on statistics and news from official government sources like the Ministry of Health. Journalists at papers in both regions followed a Russian version of the “disseminator role” (Wu et al., 1996)—a relatively passive position in which they mostly transmitted official press releases with colorless headlines (e.g., from a Region B paper: “The number of confirmed cases of the coronavirus has risen”).

The papers’ partial dependence on local government certainly shaped this position. The Region B newspaper editor said that their regional government, regional Duma and city administration were the only ad buyers during the pandemic, and so, not surprisingly, the newspaper avoided questioning their government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Similarly, a Region C editor said that avoiding commentary and in-depth or interpretive reporting about COVID was a way to “maintain friendship” with the regional government:

If you write about what is really happening, you can be persecuted for disseminating false information. And it does not matter whether it is true or not, the state itself will decide to punish or not. Therefore, we prefer to give only numbers.

A Region B paper’s social media manager said reporters were using social media just to repurpose information across platforms—merely “repackaging the emptiness” without “thinking if information we shared had any value to readers.”

The papers’ neutral disseminator position was reinforced by their perception of their audiences’ fatalistic viewpoint that the virus was “uncontrollable” (in the words of the Traditional reporter) and that discussion of policy about it was of little or no use. A Region B editor said he did not think that thorough reporting would interest or engage the community due to “a mass belief in the virus as fate – будь, что будет (whatever happens)”—a position consistent with past scholarship explaining the historical lack of meaningful public discourse in Russia (Greene, 2009; Kiriya & Kachkaeva, 2011).

While the organizational stance in regions B and C followed logically from the papers’ economic position, journalists at the individual level chafed at constraints. An informal neutral policy kept the paper out of trouble and allowed it a modicum of professional control, but it suppressed journalists’ frustration about insufficient government response to the virus and vaccines in their provinces, as a Region C editor explained in April 2020:

What is the point to campaign for the vaccine if it’s available in Moscow, not regions? It’s quite irritating to watch state-supported TV channels showing how people in a Moscow mall get a vaccine and ice cream as a reward.

Interviewed in November 2021, the same editor said, “People believe in conspiracy theories like ‘vaccination is a method of genetic control’ and avoid getting a vaccine.”

Based on interviews, regions B and C decreased their level of coronavirus coverage across the year 2020. By the end of the year, diminishing audience interest, assessed by monitoring site traffic, was affecting news decisions, according to a Region C editor, and by 2022, COVID news was deemed “unsellable” by region B and C reporters.

While region B and C newspapers kept publishing one to four stories a day about the pandemic on their websites, they drastically decreased the number of such stories on social media over the years. One of the publications eventually started disseminating only numbers of those discharged from the hospital. These coverage decisions were consistent with government interest in playing down the suffering and the paper’s strategic position as a neutral disseminator, but it also reflects news managers’ dispassionate financial calculation based on declining audience interest. These rationales dovetailed and discouraged further COVID coverage.

Newsroom Work Policy and the Pandemic

Both Region C editors mandated remote work before the government’s official announcement in spring 2020, after which staffers worked from home. Policy was consistent with the neutral, rational calculation evident in their decisions about COVID reporting. According to one editor: “[There is] no reason to interview people face-to-face [as] data can be gathered via phone/email.”

A Region B editor proposed combining remote and office work. He came to the office every day, and he asked two volunteers to show up once a week to assist him. Younger staffers declined. The editor was devastated. “They hid behind older reporters, who didn’t hesitate to come in,” he said. “This crisis has become a test of professional worth.” In fact, a state regulation allowed working individuals aged above 65 to self-isolate and receive sick leave payments, the editor said. Yet, Region B newspaper’s older reporters continued coming to the newsroom at least once a week.

Summary and Analysis of Findings

Coverage of the Pandemic

Across the three regions and six papers, approaches to covering the pandemic were similar in that they avoided questioning their local governments; however, there was also difference across these cases. Different degrees of dependency on the government corresponded with variability in news coverage and work situations. The Government and the Traditional as subsidized outlets were more government-dependent and on a shorter leash, and they were expected to advocate for the regional government. Other factors—objective qualities, in Abbott’s (1988) words—helped account for variability as well: uncertain conditions, political-economic differences across regions, perceptions of readers’ fatalism about the pandemic, and the fluidity of social media.

From within an ecological framework, the Government newspaper’s shifting response to the crisis reflects the subjective “renegotiation” that Abbott (2005b) predicted when social actors adapt to changing objective situations. At the beginning of the crisis, the Government paper parroted the official government rhetoric of a courageous “collective we” resisting the virus. They promoted belief in the regional government’s ability to solve problems, and journalists’ physical presence in the newsroom and at government press conferences during the pandemic reflected this support. At the same time, there were whispers of defiance at the Government exemplified by reporters’ refusal to disparage the critical ambulance personnel.

The Traditional’s extreme resource scarcity placed it in a unique position, distinguishing it from the Government: The Traditional required regional government subsidies, but it was too weak and rudderless to either support the regional government in return or to engage in deviance. The Traditional’s response to objective (political and economic) challenges is not well explained by Abbott’s ecological approach. These journalists exerted minimal effort to maintain control over their work and its goals; rather, their adaptation reflected a desire to do only what they had to do to survive, to limp along one day to the next. The paper seems to fall below the threshold at which some ecological assumptions operate—that is, that social actors will respond and adapt to conditions to keep from losing control. The more market-based papers—the Private in Region A and the papers in regions B and C—were somewhat more successful in maintaining professional control in adapting to COVID and government pressures—the Private by providing useful news for readers, and B and C papers through neutral dissemination.

Social media management differed little across the papers: Decisions generally mirrored website content, as managers mostly scaled back COVID coverage as they observed fading reader interest (Cinelli et al., 2020). This financially rational strategy, most notable in regions B and C, led to low-profile pandemic coverage, which is consistent with the government’s preference for less alarming COVID news. Exceptions were found in Region A papers: The Government staff engaged occasionally in deviant anonymous commenting, and the Traditional hid its news outlet identity and used its social media accounts to disseminate positive news about the government and United Russia. However, Private’s journalists used social media little. Because of their transactional manager, they made no move if not paid to do so, and financial screws were tightened even more during the pandemic.

To summarize, the pandemic has become a sort of litmus test that revealed a struggling state of provincial journalism in Russia. Using another metaphor, regional journalism had serious pre-existing conditions (e.g., government dependence and economic constraints) entering the pandemic time, and the COVID-19-related limitations further aggravated the news production routine. In the end, like in many other places in the world (Pearman et al., 2021), these three regions’ media did not provide an adequate coverage of the pandemic to help their readership cope with this public health crisis.

Newsroom Work Policy and the Pandemic

Newsroom policies on reporters’ work conditions during the pandemic also seemed influenced by the degree of independence. The two newspapers from the more affluent Region C were the most autonomous organizations in the sample, and these papers were allowed to demonstrate a culture of care by allowing staff to work from home. The Traditional from Region A was most dependent as it obeyed the regional government’s command to show up for work, while Region A’s Government paper was most proactively supportive of regional government’s stance on COVID, and most staff came to the office. Differences in these decisions revealed a generational schism, a phenomenon reported in previous literature on Russian regional media (Erzikova & Lowrey, 2020; Pasti, 2005). In both regions A and B, older journalists tended to prioritize their professional obligations over personal health concerns to ensure an interrupted news production process—this despite permission for older staff to work remotely during the pandemic. Younger reporters tended to minimize their risk.

Across the 2-year study periods, journalists initially viewed the pandemic as a professional issue, and they covered the crisis “wholeheartedly,” as a Traditional reporter put it. A few months into the pandemic after many of them contracted COVID, the issue drifted into the personal realm. In early 2022, reporters generally said their concern is not how to “report on Omicron effectively” but rather how to avoid catching the virus a second or third time, and how to “protect the families,” as several interviewees said.

To summarize, this study revealed two noteworthy gaps. First, the ownership type appeared to be a factor in newsroom policy decision-making, with private media being more willing to adjust to the pandemic and protect their staff. Second, generational differences seemed to play a role in how reporters responded to the health threats, and older reporters choosing the duty over safety.

Conclusion

Big Data studies (e.g., Krawczyk et al., 2021; Pearman et al., 2021) of the media coverage of COVID-19 around the world revealed the media were generally unhelpful for public education and crisis management. This study examined possible reasons for inadequate coverage in Russia, through case studies of legacy news publications in three Russian provinces. This research analyzed the ways regional journalists and news outlets subjectively adapted their positions and practices in the face of objective constraints: that is, pandemic-induced pressures in an already challenging political-economic environment.

By focusing on Russian journalists’ strategies during the pandemic, this article underscores the importance of studying local journalism worldwide as local journalists across media systems face some similar challenges, such as resource scarcity, diminishing staffs, and distrust from local audiences. The case of Russian regional journalism, however, adds to the literature by providing granular analysis of local journalists’ professional responses to extreme political-economic constraints—constraints rarely found in frequently studied Western media systems. Findings revel mostly compliance, as expected, but also subtle forms of deviance. As Hanitzsch and Vos (2018) say, we gain a broader, more enriching view when we look beyond “expectations of the Western standard model” (p. 150) and consider that a fully functioning democracy is not a requirement for the practice of journalism (Josephi, 2013).

While interview findings suggest conditions in these regions, the purposive sample prohibits generalization. The interview method itself is limiting, and analysis of content would add valuable understanding of the results of journalists’ perceptions, behaviors, and constraints. In addition, Russian provinces and their media markets differ across the country, and findings cannot be generalized to all Russian regional media. Future research samples should include news organizations, both independent and state-controlled, in other provinces, with the purpose of examining how varied local environments shape news outlets’ strategies to adapt to the pandemic. A cross-national comparative study could be helpful too, with the goal of supplementing Big Data research with insights from qualitative findings.

For the studied papers, however, journalists’ adaptive responses to the pandemic, to the obvious needs of the papers’ reading public, and to political-economic pressures had significant similarities. Journalists mostly avoided the pandemic as an issue for the public realm. In doing so, they sought safety and stability in two distinct niches: They either followed the party line, adhering to the wishes of government officials and largely ignoring community needs, or they provided information of some potential help to the community but that was unlikely to stir public interest or discussion—for example, dry facts and matter-of-fact advice for individuals. Reader attitudes further supported these strategies. Fatalistic readers generally found the pandemic “uncontrollable”—that is, a big and unpredictable problem beyond the government’s limited capacity to solve, and therefore meaningless as a topic of rational public discussion.