How newspapers balance Estonia’s split society

Before the Tallinn street-cleaners could sweep up the rubbish and glass in the aftermath of the April riots which left one dead and some 140 injured, Estonian politicians were moaning that the country’s ethnic Russians live in an entirely different "informational zone".

During the upheaval, a large part of Estonia’s Russians - who make up approximately 25% of the country’s 1.3 million - watched Russia’s main TV chan-nels, broadcast from Moscow, to get the latest news on events in their own country.

The coverage, not surprisingly, was vehemently anti-Estonian and contained no small number of inaccuracies and falsehoods. This, claim Estonian politicians, threw fuel onto the flames.

The government moved quickly and has pledged to improve the quality of Russian-language news on public TV and radio. Already a leading TV news programme has round-the-clock news in Russian on its website (novosti.etv24.ee).

Estonia’s print media, which is wholly in private hands, might provide some valuable lessons. Leading papers have in recent years made admirable strides in bridging the ethnic gap in the Baltic state and providing a quality product for both Estonians and Russians.

Postimees, with a circulation of 69,000 is the country’s most popular daily and in November 2005 it launched a Russian-language version. It now has a daily print-run of 19,000 and, in the words of editor Merit Kopli, is a "tremendous success".

She says that around 60% of both the Estonian and Russian-language versions are identical in content, but the rest is tailored to each ethnic audience. Reporting on the April violence, which had been triggered by the government’s decision to remove a Soviet-era Second World War monument and war grave from the center of Tallinn, put the paper’s bi-ethnic staff to an extreme test.

Another successful bilingual project is Linnaleht, a free daily printed five times per week in both languages. Both papers’ staffs work in the same room and often discuss what content is going into each version. Linnaleht’s daily circulation is 40,500 and has spawned weekly versions in Estonia’s next two biggest cities - Linnaleht Tartu and Linnaleht Parnu - though these two are in Estonian only.

Linnaleht tells another side of Estonia’s unique media story. The paper is 50% controlled by Eesti Meedia, which owns the Postimees, while the other half belongs to competitor Ekspress Grupp, a massive media holding that, among others, owns Estonia’s third most popular daily, Eesti Paevaleht (39,500).

Eesti Meedia, in turn, is 92.5% owned by Norway’s Schibsted, which owns European papers such as Sweden’s Svenska Dagbladet and 20 Minutes in France and Spain.

These two media conglomerates also jointly (50-50) own SL Ohtuleht (65,100), Estonia’s leading tabloid and second most popular daily.

But then again, maybe this is just more evidence of how small Estonia is. Everyone seems to know each other. Little wonder, then, that the Postimees has been accused of supporting Prime Minister Andrus Ansip’s Reform Party, when Ansip and Mark Kadastik, Eesti Media’s chairman, went to school together.

In all, there are 43 papers in Estonia - six dailies, 11 weeklies, 23 regional papers, and three free dailies (the Linnaleht series). The Estonian Newspapers’ Association says that Tallinn soaks up 75% of the country’s total average circulation of 590,000 papers.

Language-wise, Estonian papers account for 80% of total circulation, and Russian papers 20%.

Another aspect embracing the linguistic divide: a booming industry. Advertising and subscriptions are soaring, thanks in large part to an 11.4% increase in the gross domestic product last year - the second fastest rate in the European Union. Total average circulation of newspapers climbed 7.4% in 2006, while advertising income soared 18%.

This year may prove to be even better. Overall media advertising, including on TV and radio, increased a whopping 32% in the first quarter, according to preliminary data.

The good times even prompted the Ekspress Group to go public in March, the first media holding to do so in the Baltics. The IPO was considered a success, with a large swathe of shares bought up by international investors.

Even Igor Rotov, the editor-in-chief of Aripaev, Estonia’s business daily, which is owned by Sweden’s Bonnier Group, is now a stakeholder in the Ekspress Group. Once again, more evidence of how just tiny Estonia can be.

• Gary Peach is a freelance journalist based in Riga, Latvia.

Before the Tallinn street-cleaners could sweep up the rubbish and glass in the aftermath of the April riots which left one dead and some 140 injured, Estonian politicians were moaning that the country’s ethnic Russians live in an entirely different "informational zone".