The Coverage of the Economic Crisis in the Rostov Press in the Early 90s of the XX Century

Abstract

The topic of the economic crisis became one of the most popular and in demand in the post-soviet press − the mass and professional audience showed increased interest in publications devoted to changes in the standard of living of the population, the decline in production, and economic reform.
In connection with this, economic media were opened in the country, economic sections and headings appeared in already existing periodicals. In the early 1990s, in the Rostov region, which was the largest agro-industrial region of the country, there was a sharp deterioration in economic indicators of production, there was a shortage of goods (including food) − economic transformations were described in detail in local periodicals. The article is devoted to the peculiarities of the coverage of the economic crisis on the pages of the Rostov publications “Molot” and “Vecherniy Rostov”, analyzes the functional, genre aspects of economic topics, identifies the role of journalists in its accentuation and formation of the readership's interest in economic publications. Classification, comparative and philological methods were used to identify typological (founders, internal structure of the media, genres), thematic, stylistic, methodological (methods and forms of media work) characteristics of newspapers that considered the transformation of the economic environment. It is shown that the commercialization of the media industry, the development of the media democracy, as well as the lack of analytical experience of regional journalists in dealing with economic problems determined the specifics of the media: the prevalence of information genres in covering economic processes, the lack of a clear information policy due to the desire to display on the pages of publications the opinions and interests of administrative, commercial structures and the population; a change in style and language of Mass media in order to expand the readership. It is concluded that the economic topic is one of the most important on the pages of regional media, during the economic crisis, thus, interest in it increases; interpretation of current economic events is carried out by journalists, as a rule, who do not have special economic education, in this connection the question arises at the present
stage about the need to increase additional competencies in the field of economics for employees
of regional media.