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Last year, the state news agency, ITAR-TASS went back to its Soviet brand, simply TASS -- once short for "the Soviet Union's Telegraph Agency", now a standalone acronym like BP -- and adopted the proud slogan "We know." Ramzan Kadyrov, the fiercely pro-Putin leader of Chechnya, went so far as to name a mountain peak in the Caucasus after TASS. But yesterday, the agency, which had just two years ago tempted many private media journalists with salaries only an oil monarchy could pay, announced a 25 percent staff cut and a 20 percent salary cut. Those who refuse to take it are offered five times their monthly salaries to quit immediately.
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The government-owned Rossiyskaya Gazeta, which holds the monopoly on the official publication of new laws and government decrees, is letting go 10 percent of its staff. News Media, the holding company that runs a number of media assets for Putin's close friend Yury Kovalchuk, decided to cut between 15 and 30 percent of its staff, including 15 to 17 percent of the employees of Lifenews, the TV channel that has carried some of the most powerful domestically-targeted propaganda on the Ukraine crisis.
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Six months ago, RT had been promised a 30 percent increase to its 2014 budget so it could start broadcasting in German and French. Now, the 2015 allocation, 15.4 billion rubles ($240 million), will be cut by 10 percent. RT is still getting more money than last year, but the ruble's sharp devaluation in recent months means that the dollar value of the subsidy has decreased by 46 percent. That's important for RT because it works in foreign markets and hires foreigners. According to RT editor Margarita Simonyan, about 80 percent of the operation's expenses are in foreign currencies. Plans for the German and French versions will probably be scrapped, Simonyan told the daily Vedomosti, at least for this year.
At the same time, the Russian Communications Ministry is setting tougher goals for Russia Today to justify the subsidy. In Russian government programs, future disbursements depend on how the subsidy recipient meets key performance indicators -- see, Russian government managers have been to business school! So a new version of the "Information Society 2011-2020" program, under which Russia Today is funded, requires RT to have an audience of 640 million, up from 630 million in the previous version. If the program is approved, Russia Today will also need to make sure that its work is cited 13,500 times by foreign media, compared with 7500 times planned for 2014.