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New Yorker Clone Closed

Theories are rife as to why Novy Ochevidets folded, but the fledgling magazine isn't offering details.

By Victor Sonkin
Published: January 14, 2005

Moscow's literary community is abuzz with reports that Novy Ochevidets, Russia's answer to The New Yorker, has been shut down after just five months in operation.

Though neither editor Sergei Mostovshchikov nor publisher Paola Messana could be reached for comment, sources close to the magazine, including former contributors and media watchers, said that its sudden closure had come as a surprise. Indeed, deputy fiction editor Alexander Kabakov was said to be planning for the coming year as late as last month.

Yelena Ivanova, head of the periodicals department of EastView Publications, which markets the magazine internationally, said she had been shocked to receive a call from the magazine announcing its closure. "We weren't too happy because we had already collected many clients abroad," she said.

The wave of speculation unleashed by news of the magazine's discontinuation -- a secretary at the editorial offices confirmed that it had been shut down but said that no one would be available for comment -- echoes the mini-scandal that greeted its launch last August, when its striking visual resemblance to The New Yorker drew international attention.

However, the U.S. magazine says that it had nothing to do with the magazine's demise. "I never thought once about pursuing any action against Novy Ochevidets and always took the imitation as flattery," New Yorker editor David Remnick wrote by e-mail last week.

Launched amid an aggressive advertising campaign by Lighthouse Publishers, a printing house created specifically for the purpose, the weekly magazine claimed to fill a forgotten niche on the already overcrowded periodicals market. Its target audience, according to Messana and Mostovshchikov, was made up of prosperous intellectuals disillusioned by the mass media and not particularly devoted to politics or popular culture.

The magazine made a splash with its in-depth reviews of film and literature, short stories, imaginative essays and, uniquely for a general-interest magazine in Russia, first-rate poetry. Many unaffiliated journalists scowled, though not, perhaps, without a hint of envy at the reportedly high rates that Novy Ochevidets writers were receiving for their work.

Despite The New Yorker's initial surprise at Novy Ochevidets' lookalike layout, Remnick, a former Moscow correspondent for The Washington Post and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book "Lenin's Tomb," expressed his regret at the magazine's closing.

"As an editor and someone who hopes the best for Russia it makes me sad to think that a magazine as ambitious as this hasn't succeeded," he wrote. "For all kinds of reasons, the prospects for a rigorous press in Russia seem dismal these days. I hope that situation reverses itself -- and soon."

See related story: Cover Version. Concept, layout and all, a new Russian magazine takes after The New Yorker right down to the cartoons.

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