Issue #18/99, September 14 - 28, 2000 
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THE SERIOUS PAPER OLYMPICS
It’s Olympics time, and we here in Moscow have been treated to one of the most intense, bizarre competitions ever witnessed. We are speaking, of course, about the banality decathalon. Last week, a lucky few English-speaking Moscow residents were treated to the George Romero-esque return of the old standby of horrendous expat newspapers, The Moscow Tribune. The funny thing about it is that The Trib re-arrives on a serious aspiring-to-be-a-paper-of-record scene already crowded with The Moscow Times and The Russia Journal. God only knows what these papers’ purposes are here. Up to 70% of the English-speaking expats who were here two years ago have left town, and ad revenues (real and potential) have plummeted by roughly the same ratio. The Times Jobs Opps ads used to run 16 revenue-juicing pages long; these days, they’re lucky to fill two measly pages. But that doesn’t stop the propaganda machines from a-churnin’. The Russia Journal first appeared in the aftermath of the crisis, and, despite hardly selling a single ad since (even with giveaway rates), has grown to 64 inexplicable pages of ungrammatical English, pro-Kremlin propaganda, Aeroflot-level advertorials, and, yes, Dilbert. No one has yet figured out what the purpose of that newspaper is, although you might get an answer from Gleb Pavlovsky or www.cia.org. The Moscow Tribune, on the other hand, was started up years ago by the son of a noted KGB disinformation tool, Anthony Louis, who could never turn his father’s knack for selling bad articles to an audience. As always, there’s a struggling Indian restaurant willing to shell out $30 and a few free meals in exchange for a half-page ad in each of the “other” serious papers, while The Moscow Times continues to use its paper as a vehicle to pimp its ill-timed head-first swan dive into the bursting bubble of the internet.
We here at the eXile don’t believe in good competition, but you can bet your bottom kopek that the editor/proprietors of our three esteemed “serious” English-language papers would all profess to espouse the ideals of “good competition makes us all better in the end.”
EVENT #1: THE DISILLUSIONED LIBERAL COMPETITION
Lane 1: The Russia Journal: Andrei Piontowsky, “Who Wants To Wail?”
Lane 2: The Moscow Times: Matt Bivens, “Putin Not Ready for His Close-Up”
Lane 3: The Moscow Tribune: Stanislav Menshikov [disqualified for failing drug test]
As expected, this was a close race, but Piontowsky pulled it out in the end with his bold last paragraph: “Indeed, it’s enough to want to wail looking at the hopelessness and helplessness of a society run by cruel and inhuman, lying and cowardly, greedy and…”. You get the picture. He’s a disillusioned liberal, while Bivens, although showing impressive stamina, has really slowed down with age and the injury he sustained during the tax raid on his company last winter.
EVENT #2: THE DILBERT COMPETITION
Lane 1: The Moscow Times: Saturday, September 2
Lane 2: The Russia Journal: Friday, September 8
Lane 3: The Moscow Tribune [disqualified for showing up to the event wearing a Speedo and leather chaps]
There was never a doubt who would win this event. The Moscow Times has been publishing three to four Dilbert cartoons per week for quite some time now. The Russia Journal, in spite of its deep pockets and desperate desire to become the cubicle favorite, still needs time to develop a world-class Dilbert program. While they showed heart by trying to make up in Born Loser and Ripley’s Believe It Or Not strips what they lacked in Dilbert, they were no match for the Times’s team of seasoned Dilbert toons. Even the fact that last Saturday’s issue ditched Dilbert in favor of the awful I-just-learned-Adobe-Illustrator cartoons of their new in-house sovok, the utterly incomprehensible lead-witted eyesore Elkin, was not enough to stop the Times juggernaut.
EVENT #3: THE “BUSINESS IN RUSSIA IS GETTING BETTER” COMPETITION
Lane 1: The Moscow Times: “10 Year Highs for Aeroflot”
Lane 2: The Russia Journal: “Privatization’s Good Times and Bad”
Lane 3: The Moscow Tribune: “The Economic Outlook for the Economy Looks Good”
Pole-vaulting reality is never easy, and this was no exception. In perhaps the most exciting event of the “serious newspaper Olympics (English language edition),” all three newspapers issued a bevy of silver-lined articles on the disastrously corrupt and depressed economy. The Trib, once a bastion of unmedicated leftism, suddenly raised the bar-level of reality pole-vaulting by not only nailing the lie on the head, but by pulling off one of its age-old tricks, a ridiculous headline to go with it. The Russia Journal was seen cursing itself for not having published an article just like that, and were scratching their heads in wonder at The Trib’s near-grammatical use of English. They have lodged a complaint with the Serious Paper Olympic Committee, although they filled out the form incorrectly and misspelled their opponents’ names.
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