The periodical press of Tomsk in the 1990s: an analysis of the dynamics of development

The article analyzes changes in the press market in the 1990s due to economic instability and rapid development of alternative media. The subject of the research is the peculiarities of the development of newspaper periodicals in the period of the 1990s. The aim of the article is to analyze the dynamics and to reveal the tendencies, which were typical of the print media in this period. The research is based on the transcripts of microphone materials kept in the State Archive of the Tomsk region and the materials of periodical press (newspapers «Krasnoe Znamya», «Narodnaya Tribuna», «Tomsky Vestnik», and others). Comprehension of peculiarities of transformations that occurred with newspaper periodicals of the 1990s should become an important component in the systematic study of Tomsk media sphere. The article characterizes the changes in the structure of the media sphere, noting a significant increase in the number of non-state media. Competition with other media and difficult economic conditions of the market became the factors contributing to the difficult situation with the newspaper periodicals. In the course of the study, changes in the newspaper press market have been analyzed. As a result, publications that were closed in the 1990s (e.g., «Tomsk Youth Express», «Tomsk Spectator»), publications that were published in the Soviet period and continued in the 1990s (e.g., Krasnoye Znamya) and new Tomsk newspaper publications (e.g., «Vam», «Delo», «Reklama») have been covered. The author comes to the following conclusions. The number of publications that appeared before the 1990s and continued to exist at that time and of the ones that appeared in the 1990s is much higher than those that disappeared from the market of printed products of Tomsk. The thematic range of publications expanded. Transformation of the media sphere had a significant impact on the process of reorganization of newspaper periodicals, became an incentive to update the "old" editions. As a result, there were serious changes in the information policy of newspapers. Thus, institutional, compositional and graphic, and thematic changes are covered in the article. The editorial policies of the newspapers, which changed under the new economic conditions, contributed to the transformation of many newspapers into successful market publications. One of the most important trends of the period was the symbiosis of journalism and commercial advertising which became the main source of survival for many publications. The diversity of new publications intended for different groups of readership, their preservation and successful existence under market conditions, and the tendency to grow in a difficult material existence allow us to conclude that the newspaper press successfully overcame the period of the 1990s. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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