Sure, Russia's respectable news media has been neutered and cowed (or killed, when the first two didn't work), but the mudslinging tabloids are going great guns dishing on celebrities and low level problems in Russian society.
And as long as they don't aim too high, the Kremlin is okay with that.
For decades, Komsomolskaya Pravda served up article after leaden article about Soviet officials meeting with other Soviet officials. Now, reinvented as a tabloid, the newspaper has a rowdier agenda — and a huge audience.
The paper’s most-read item one recent day was a verbal catfight between a celebrity radio hostess and Ksenia Sobchak, Russia’s answer to Paris Hilton.
In the newspaper’s Moscow offices, a star correspondent was polishing an intrigue-filled opus on the death of the supermodel from Kazakhstan who jumped — or so the police said — from her Lower Manhattan balcony last month. The editor-in-chief was lukewarm on the photo of the model in her prime: Was there one that showed a little more leg?
A 27-year-old crime reporter thought he might have a big scoop, the ultimate Russian tear-jerker: A World War II veteran said he had been robbed of his medals. Better yet, the old soldier claimed to have served with the father of Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin.
“We’ll run, before the competition beats us,” the reporter, Shamil Dzhemakulov, shouted to his anxious editor. “I have all the documents!”
The newspaper is part of a vibrant tabloid culture that illustrates the complex nature of Russian life under Mr. Putin. As long as they do not threaten the Kremlin or its closest friends, it seems, Russian newspapers can be as raucous as they like.
For papers like Komsomolskaya Pravda, which sells more copies than any other Russian newspaper, the country’s recent rollback of press freedoms is largely beside the point.
Their investigative journalism tends toward exposés of incompetent police work, corrupt low-level officials and dirty train stations, everyday problems Russians care about. And their standard fare of scandal, entertainment and “news you can use” represents a normalization of sorts in a country that for years was too poor to develop a consumer culture and too caught up with political turmoil to dwell on celebrity gossip.