An open letter to friends of the Mendeleyev Journal

The idea for the Mendeleyev Journal, http://russianreport.wordpress.com, came about in 2007 and we started publication online in April 2008. In those days a great portion of the non-broadcast writing was a column for Bolshoi, a Moscow-based Russian language magazine on fine arts, music and entertainment. The idea to create a journal about Russia, primarily aimed at Western readers, was a thrilling concept. In those days we were excited to have 10 readers a day!

Already this year we’ve rolled the “odometer” over 100,000 readers and will possibly serve 300,000+ this year. Our lean but dedicated team is pushing for a higher goal–we would be honoured to serve a million readers annually by 2015.

Readers come from all sorts of places and some seem to have more impact than others. Anytime we’re in the London Guardian for example, the spike in hits and “page reads” soars! The same can be said of France24 the French national news service as well as the Times of London. “Ping backs” which indicate that we’re being quoted/copied in large publications brings new readers, too. Exposure on Liquia News and the National Review have added to our reader base this year.

We’ve been blessed to achieve high rankings in the Russian search engine market as well. Yandex (like a Russian Goggle) generally lists us near the top of the page on any topic we tackle. That Russians are interested in reading an English language publication is gratifying.

But with the growth we don’t want to be “thin” either. The success of an online publication is to be “sticky” so that readers come and stay for a while reading other stories and exploring additional pages. There are well over 50 pages on a variety of topics from Russian photos, food, music, politics, language, history and religion. The original goal of the Mendeleyev Journal was to focus on life, traditions, art, food, music and the people of the former Soviet Union and to leave the news for other venues. We’ve had to adjust that vision because of practical realities–we do the news more accurately than most and are trusted by both the Russian authorities and by news organizations back home.

Our push for the remainder of 2011 is to be more fully “sticky” so that readers will have a reason to subscribe. Subscriptions, even free ones, have a positive impact on our business model so thank you for scrolling down toward the bottom of the home page and taking the time to subscribe. Look for the little button, which says “sign me up” at the right hand bottom.

Finally, what do you like, or dislike about the Journal? To move forward and to new heights we need to know what readers are thinking. Shoot us an email at mendeleyevskaya@yahoo.com.

We’d love to hear from you.

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