A team of independent journalists and researchers have created the Russian Independent Media Archive (RIMA). The project aims to establish a safe vault for archives of independent media outlets which will not be deleted or blocked.
“We want to preserve the work that independent Russian journalists have been doing for more than 20 years <…> Most independent Russian journalists have had to leave the country.”
“Independent media have been censored and have lost their sources of revenue.”
“As media outlets fight to survive, they can’t always safeguard their archives, in the short or longer term,” the RIMA website reads.
The project’s roadmap shows that the archive will gather articles and materials created by TV Rain, Echo of Moscow, Meduza, Mediazona, Novaya Gazeta, Novaya Gazeta Europe, Kholod, OVD-Info, Project, DOXA, Pskov Gubernia, and other independent outlets.
It is also planned to create a database with a high-quality search system and make it accessible to all users: journalists, researchers, and everyone else who seeks to understand what has been happening in Russia over the last few decades and how these events were reported about by media outlets.
Moreover, according to the project founders, the archive can become a tool to analyse “how Russia gradually turned into a dictatorship, how dictatorships work in general, and to involve people in this conversation”. “After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there can be no doubt that the harm done by a dictatorship reaches beyond any given country. Dictatorships affect the world,” they add.
The project is being created with the support of Russian and American journalist Masha Gessen, Bellingcat founder Christo Grozev, historian Ilia Venyakin, journalist Anna Nemzer, and others. RIMA’s partners include Bard College and PEN America.
