The “Managing the Crisis” session exposed its participants to comparative trends on the Russian and international press markets. According to Alexander Strakhov, CEO of the Media3 publishing holding and GIPP’s President, left, the crisis stopped many development projects, but did not inflict any significant damage on the existing industry.
Russian publishers were caught by the global economic crisis in the middle of a rapid upward cycle. The advertising market for several years experienced growth at the rate of up to 30 per cent, and cheap loans were offered for long-term development planning. The crisis resulted in a 30-per cent drop in advertising in the first half of 2009, and loans became unavailable. Rapidly developing companies with loans in dollars or Euros were hit particularly hard by the devaluation of the national currency.
According to Strakhov, the industry avoided a catastrophe because the press in Russia has strong audience loyalty and relies heavily on sales of print runs, labor relations are pretty flexible, and the Internet penetration is relatively low. He noted that by July downward trends stabilized, and September saw the beginning of moderate growth.
Strakov’s main hope for the future lies in the continuation of the positive trends. He sees the main risks for the industry as stemming from macroeconomic factors.
Reiner Mittelbach, second from left, co-CEO of WAN-IFRA, outlined the main international trends in news publishing worldwide. Wolfgang Fuerstner, right, managing member of the board of the German magazine publishers association, VDZ, spoke on developments in his industry.
