Aleksey Shevtsov — a Nizhny Novgorod journalist and copywriter who worked under the brand "Masterskaya Tekstov" (Text Workshop). His private practice writing advertising, business, and corporate materials operated in Nizhny Novgorod at the turn of the 2000s and 2010s, serving local companies and election campaigns. Before going freelance, Shevtsov wrote for Nizhny Novgorod newspapers and magazines and worked in public relations at the heating company Teploenergo and the communications agency Agitprom.
Journalism and Public Relations
By his own account, by 2010 Shevtsov had ten years of writing experience behind him. Three of those were spent in journalism: he wrote for the Nizhny Novgorod edition of Moskovsky Komsomolets and for the newspapers Pikantnye Novosti, Svetskaya Zhizn, Sosedi-Privolzhye, Za Rulyom — Nizhny Novgorod, and Osobaya Knopka, as well as the magazines Avtobiznes and Priyom.
He spent a further six years as a public relations specialist at the open joint-stock company Teploenergo and at the communications agency Agitprom. In election campaigns for the Nizhny Novgorod City Council and the Regional Legislative Assembly, he served as speechwriter, press secretary, and editor of the campaign newspaper. His educational background is in philology — Russian language and literature.
My name is Aleksey Shevtsov. I am 32 years old, and for ten of those years I have been creating texts. Three years as a journalist for newspapers and magazines. Six years as a PR specialist. Since 2009, I have worked freelance as a copywriter.
Masterskaya Tekstov
From 2009, Shevtsov worked as a freelance copywriter, bringing his services together under the name Masterskaya Tekstov (Text Workshop). Clients were offered advertising letters and commercial proposals, press releases, refutations and press comments, brochures and booklets, website copy, business letters and reports, public speeches, as well as rewriting, stylistic editing, and proofreading of others' texts.
A separate line of work was the turnkey production of corporate publications: developing the concept for a newspaper or bulletin, its house style and editorial plan, organizing the editorial workflow, layout, and distribution. Engagements with clients were structured around a written brief, with a fifty-percent advance and the client's right to decline the finished text and receive a refund of that advance.
Shevtsov tallied his output in units that themselves became a hallmark of the Nizhny Novgorod internet of those years:
- more than 3.5 million printed characters of text for newspapers and magazines;
- 158 press releases and 98 business and advertising letters;
- 34 public speeches, 26 reports and presentations;
- 12 concepts for new projects;
- 11 regulations, 63 orders, 8 job descriptions;
- corporate newspapers totaling 54.56 square meters of printed area;
- copy for 9 presentations and booklets, and one slogan competition won.
Blogging in Someone Else's Name
Among the workshop's services was one that defined its era more precisely than any other: paid maintenance of an internet diary on behalf of a client — a local executive or public figure. At the turn of the 2000s and 2010s, the personal blogs of Nizhny Novgorod officials and businesspeople were a prominent feature of the city's online landscape, and writing entries to be published under the account holder's name existed as a distinct paid service, priced per post.