Nizhny Novgorod Press Club — a professional discussion club for journalists and Mass Media workers, established in Nizhny Novgorod in 2009[1][2]. The first meeting took place on 18 May 2009; over its first year the club held more than a dozen gatherings[3]. Sessions ran in two cycles — a political one, featuring meetings with parties and civic movements, and a cultural one called "Cultural Code"[4]. At the meeting of 30 April 2010, the Encyclopedia of Nizhny Novgorod was presented here for the first time[3].

How it worked

The club was conceived as a platform for open public discussion of what was happening in the city and the Region, with the participation of both journalists and invited experts[1][3]. The format was informal: a guest from Moscow or from the local scene, an hour to an hour and a half of conversation, unscreened questions from the floor.

The club's own press center was located at Verkhne-Volzhskaya Embankment, 9a, in the conference hall of the Oktyabrskaya Hotel[4]. Sessions were livestreamed — first on ustream.tv, then recordings were posted to the club's LiveJournal blog and its YouTube channel[4]. Photo reports and transcripts accumulated in the club's group on nnov.org, where each meeting had its own dedicated photo album: the meeting with Irina Khakamada yielded 106 shots, the September Nemtsov session 86, and Ivan Begtin 63[4].

A year on a river boat

The club marked its anniversary on April 30, 2010, with a session aboard the riverboat *Georgy Zhukov* — supported by the river tourism company Volga-Flot-Tur. The discussion was titled "Mass Media. Images of the Future" and was devoted to online journalism and the future of newspapers[3].

The special guest was Maxim Trudolyubov, editor of the commentary section at the newspaper *Vedomosti*; he spoke about the structure of American Mass Media and insisted that "quality journalism is job number one." Vladimir Lapyrin, editor-in-chief of the Birzha publishing house, objected that the medium is secondary[3].

Journalist and poet Igor Churdalev put it even more bluntly, while mobile-company representative Dmitry Smirkin defended electronic publications with the question "why buy newspapers when there is a unique opportunity to stay on top of news from around the world without leaving home"[3].

Whatever form journalism takes — electronic or print — information remains at its core. Journalists are those who obtain information and deliver it to the reader.

Where the encyclopedia was presented

At that same session, the editorial team of the autonomous non-profit organization "Open Nizhny Novgorod Encyclopedia" announced the launch of their project — the online Encyclopedia of Nizhny Novgorod", which the press at the time described as "a kind of Nizhny Novgorod-style Wikipedia"[3].

A publication about the session in *Krasivye Lyudi* magazine became the project's first mention in the press.

The political cycle

The main recurring strand consisted of meetings with representatives of parties and socio-political movements — one topic per session, with regional branches, officials, and entrepreneurs invited[4].

On June 18, 2010, the guest was Viktor Shenderovich, and in July of the same year — economist Evgeniy Gontmakher[5]. On September 7, 2010, Boris Nemtsov came with the topic "Post-Crisis Russia: What Next?"; according to the club's report, those gathered reached no consensus[4].

On January 21, 2011, Vladimir Milov, leader of the Democratic Choice movement, discussed the prospects of a united opposition in the 2011–2012 electoral cycle; on May 16, 2011, Yabloko party chairman Sergey Mitrokhin addressed the question "What does the opposition want?"; on July 21, 2011, politician Boris Nadezhdin spoke about why business enters politics[4].

On November 25, 2011, Pavel Rassudov, chairman of the Pirate Party of Russia, led a discussion titled "Electronic Democracy: Global Trends and Russian Experience" — covering the transparency of government websites, user anonymity, and copyright[4].

Lessons of December

The most well-attended session fell on January 13, 2012: Nemtsov came for the second time, with the topic "Russia. Lessons of December" — on the State Duma elections of December 4, 2011, and the protests that followed[4].

The conversation ranged beyond the federal agenda. The guest's sharp words directed at the CPRF sparked a dispute in the hall with Nizhny Novgorod Communists: deputy Vladimir Bulanov and his colleagues argued that change was only possible from within the system[4]. Local matters were also discussed: the near-total absence of independent publications, the state of the roads, electricity tariffs, and the reservoir level rise[4].

The session was broadcast live on video, and the recording was posted to the club's blog[4].

Cultural Code

In parallel, the club ran a series of meetings with figures from the cultural world — "Cultural Code." On September 14, 2010, the guest was gallery owner and art critic Marat Gelman: in the format of a "conversation over tea," he spoke about the Cultural Alliance project and about how arts funding depends entirely on local officials, who consistently give it lower priority than everything else[4].

On February 5, 2011, Irina Khakamada participated in "Kulturny Kod," with the session titled "Life Without Politics"[4]. On March 28, 2011, the club, together with the Polit.ru channel, hosted Ivan Begtin, director of the "Laboratory of Intelligent Data Analysis" and creator of projects on government data openness; the topic was "The Julian Assange Phenomenon and Information Openness in the Modern World"[4].

What Remained

The club's group on nnov.org remains open to this day: announcements, reports, and photo albums from the sessions have been preserved there[4]. The club's YouTube channel holds five recordings from 2010–2011 — Shenderovich, Gontmakher, Nemtsov, Gelman, Mitrokhin[5].

Photographs from the 2010 sessions, taken by the club, were later included in the archive of the "Nemtsov Bridge" project, which collects materials about Boris Nemtsov's travels across the country[6].

Radio52

The club's tenth session, on March 25, 2010, was titled "A 'Closed' City, Open to the World" and was devoted to the Region's international ties[7][8]. The rector of NGLU, Gennadiy Ryabov, spoke about the university's French-language programs; the director of the Nizhny Novgorod Alliance Française, Claudine Moknik, spoke about cultural exchange; and the dean of the Faculty of International Relations at NNSU, Oleg Kolobov, proposed building an "event center" in the city[7].

The sessions were filmed and documented by the club's own platform — the domain radio52.ru, hosted on the blogging platform "Blogs of Nizhny Novgorod Residents" on the nnov.ru portal[9]. The name was not a reference to a radio station but to a promise to post a "radio version" — an audio recording — of the discussions[8]. The site featured a photo gallery titled "'A Closed' City, Open to the World" with 13 portraits of participants[10] and a section called "Radio52 News," where, on May 7 — nearly a month and a half later — a report from Vremya N was reprinted[8].

No second news entry ever appeared: the same post sat on the homepage without updates for years — 533 views in May 2010 and only 73 by July 2012 [9][11], and by the end of 2014 its tags had been colonized by stray entries like "buy laminate flooring" and "victoria's secret" [12]. By the mid-2010s the domain had gone dark, and later began redirecting visitors to unrelated sites [13].

Every Russian should vacation not in Turkey but in Abkhazia

— Vladimir Litvinchuk, representative of Abkhazia in Nizhny Novgorod, at the meeting of 25 March 2010 [7]

Sources

  1. nta-pfo.ru — NTA-Privolzhye — A meeting of the discussion club will be held in Nizhny Novgorod on September 10
  2. nta-pfo.ru — NTA-Privolzhye — The Nizhny Novgorod Press Club will hold its final meeting of 2009 on December 23
  3. Vremya N — The Nizhny Novgorod Press Club marks its first anniversary (archive)
  4. press-club.nnov.org — Press Club events: announcements and meeting reports
  5. youtube.com — Nizhny Novgorod Press Club channel (archive)
  6. nemtsov-most.org — Nemtsov Bridge — Nizhny Novgorod Press Club: materials on Boris Nemtsov's visits (archive)
  7. Vremya N — Nizhny Novgorod's brand must become recognizable abroad, March 26, 2010 (archive)
  8. web.archive.org — Web Archive — "Radio52 News": the same material, snapshot dated December 18, 2010 (archive)
  9. web.archive.org — Web Archive — radio52.ru home page, snapshot dated May 12, 2010 (archive)
  10. web.archive.org — Web Archive — photo album "A 'Closed' City Open to the World", snapshot dated December 18, 2010 (archive)
  11. web.archive.org — Web Archive — radio52.ru home page, snapshot dated July 25, 2012 (archive)
  12. web.archive.org — Web Archive — radio52.ru home page, snapshot dated December 18, 2014 (archive)
  13. web.archive.org — Web Archive — radio52.ru, snapshot dated September 17, 2017 — redirect from an abandoned domain (archive)