Gabrelyanov Aram Ashotovich biography. Aram Gabrelyanov got hooked on money trolling. Gabrelyanov's character and beliefs

Gabrelyanov Aram Ashotovich- Russian journalist and publisher, chairman of the board of directors of JSC Editorial Board of the newspaper Izvestia and general director of the publishing house News Media, creator of the popular tabloid in Russia - the newspaper Life.

Biography

He graduated from the Faculty of Journalism of Moscow State University in 1985 with a degree in journalism. He was assigned to work in Ulyanovsk, where he became a correspondent for the newspaper Ulyanovsky Komsomolets, then worked there as a secretary.

On May 22, 1990, the Ulyanovsk regional committee of the Komsomol renamed the newspaper “Ulyanovsky Komsomolets” to “Word of Youth”. Soon Gabrelyanov became the editor-in-chief of the Ulyanovsk youth group, who managed to increase the newspaper's circulation from 9,000 to 210,000 copies. In 1992, the newspaper was privatized by its employees, led by Aram, and once again changed its name to Simbirsk Provincial News.

In 1995, Gabrelyanov bought the newspapers “Local Time” and “Scythians” in the city of Dimitrovgrad, Ulyanovsk region, on their basis creating the regional publishing holding “Vedomosti-Media”, which later included newspapers from Nizhny Novgorod, Samara, Saratov and Volgograd. According to the Vedomosti newspaper, Gabrelyanov also owned the newspapers Krasnoyarsky Komsomolets and Chas Pik (St. Petersburg).

Moving to Moscow

In 1996, Aram Gabrelyanov moved to Moscow and in 1997 began publishing the weekly newspaper Moskovskie Vedomosti. In 2000, the weekly was renamed the newspaper “Life”, which became famous and popular thanks to a series of scandals related to publications about the personal lives of the “stars” of Russian show business. In 2006, the publication's circulation exceeded 2 million copies.

In April 2001, Gabrelyanov, together with six newspaper employees, established Zhizn Publishing House LLC.

In 2005, he resigned from the post of general director and editor-in-chief and in September created the holding company OJSC News Media, which he himself headed.

In 2006, Gabrelyanov united into his holding the publications published under the Life brand in 50 cities of Russia, selling 50% -1 share for $40 million to the co-owner of the UFG investment group Boris Fedorov. In the fall of the same year, the daily tabloid “Your Day” was established.

In 2007 - Chairman of the Board of Directors and Editorial Director of the holding, since 2008 - General Director of News Media.

In 2008, UFG sold its stake in the News Media holding to a certain “non-market fund of a technical nature,” presumably the National Media Group of St. Petersburg businessman Yuri Kovalchuk.

On March 11, 2008, Gabrelyanov’s new project began working - the information and entertainment Internet portal Life.ru.

In the fall of 2009, instead of Life.ru, the information portal Lifenews.ru was launched, a glossy tabloid was opened - the magazine “Heat”, thematic Internet portals LifeSports.ru and LifeShowbiz.ru began operating.

At the beginning of March 2010, the holding company again began publishing the business newspaper Marker.

In April 2011, Gabrelyanov took the post of Chairman of the Board of Directors of OJSC Editorial Board of the Izvestia Newspaper, owned by the National Media Group. Previously, Gabrelyanov was appointed deputy general director of the National Media Group.

After Gabrelyanov’s appointment, at the end of May 2011, the editorial office moved from Pushkinskaya Square, where it had been located since 1926, to an office center on the territory of the Dux plant in the industrial zone of the Northern Administrative District of Moscow. The move was associated with massive layoffs of the workforce - up to 60% of the staff was fired, which caused a conflict in the editorial office. Some journalists refused to obey Gabrelyanov and editor-in-chief Malyutin, electing a new editor-in-chief at a meeting of the labor collective. However, this did not stop Gabrelyanov from continuing to publish the Izvestia newspaper in a new location.

In September 2014, Ashot Gabrelyanov resigned from the post of executive director of the News Media holding and general director of the LifeNews channel, Gabrelyanov himself told ITAR-TASS. According to him, he will focus on his own project Babo.

“This will be a technological platform, software, access to which will be purchased by TV channels in the form of a license for a period of one year,” Gabrelyanov noted. According to him, ordinary users will upload videos to this resource that the media and TV channels will be able to use in their work.

As of March 13, 2017, Aram Ashotovich Gabrelyanov works as General Director of Media Content LLC.

In May 2017, Life founder Aram Gabrelyanov left the National Media Group (NMG) holding company, where he served as deputy general director. As Dozhd reports, the newspaper Izvestia and the St. Petersburg channel Life78, which are part of NMG, were gradually removed from the management of the media manager. The same thing will probably happen with the Russian News Service radio station.

Gabrelyanov develops the Life.ru portal and the channel of the same name. However, according to the publication’s sources, these assets also do not belong entirely to the businessman, and he has allegedly already begun to remove key employees from them.

Oleg Kashin spoke about the resignation of the legendary publisher from the post of general director of News Media - “the man who set the tone for the development of Russian media in the tenth, but eventually ceased to be needed by the current government”

As a child, they wanted to hand over Aram Gabrelyanov to the banker Thatcher in another city. The banker arrived in Derbent and found little Aram sledding. He wanted to take the boy with him, but Aram grabbed the sled and hit the banker with it. “Rosebud” was written on the sleigh, and when the ruined palace of Aram is prepared for sale, this sleigh will burn in the fireplace along with the rest of the property no longer needed by anyone.

This is me now retelling an unmade movie. Remakes of classic films are often shot in Russia, and if someone decides to remake Citizen Kane, then its action, of course, will have to be moved to Derbent, Ulyanovsk and Moscow, and the main role should be played by some charismatic Armenian, who in our cinema, thank God, quite a lot. But such a film, of course, will fail at the box office, because it will be difficult to fit into Hollywood history such a rise and such a fall, in which, instead of a merciless fate, there is an even more merciless political context of Russia in the 1910s.

In the history of Russian media, there was only one case when a regional newspaper moved its entire editorial team to Moscow and turned into a large national media outlet. The former “Ulyanovsk Komsomolets” turned into the newspaper “Life”, without attracting anyone’s attention at all - this experiment was too strange and this niche, a newspaper “about the stars”, copied from The Sun, was too far from the interests of the media community. And when one day it turned out that during rush hour in the Moscow metro, if a person has a newspaper in his hands, then most likely it will be the newspaper “Life”, everyone suddenly became interested in what it was, and there was a fashion for the newspaper “Life” , the rapper Guf wrote his songs about her, snobs laughed at her sugary language, when instead of “children” you must write “angels”, and in all other cases - “I’m shocked.” Then the boss of this newspaper himself became a star - a cheerful, foul-mouthed man, not at all like an ordinary media manager, but clearly dreaming of being one - ordinary and at the same time the best. Literally like the hero of Orson Welles in the famous film.

Aram Gabrelyanov resigned as CEO of News Media

And it was somewhere at this stage that the “Citizen Kane” script failed, because Russian politics, and Russian reality in general, intervened. Tabloid culture, this philistinism, elevated to an absolute, suddenly became the Russian mainstream, the Russian official ideology. Putin himself became a tabloid hero, a topless man on a horse, but this language - when “everyone is in shock” - became the only language of power. Television turned into a tabloid, everything in Russia turned into one big tabloid story, and the path that Gabrelyanov, unnoticed by anyone, trodden in the late nineties, became the main road of the state. The entire logic of Russia’s development in the 2000s led the newspaper “Life” somewhere, towards the Kremlin. It is clear that one day the famous “friends of Putin” became the owners of Gabrelyanov’s business, but this was not a squeeze, it was an alliance, and the symbol of this alliance was Gabrelyanov’s Izvestia as the main official newspaper of the early 1900s, and the amazing Life TV channel, all in brief the history of which fits into the history of the “Russian spring” of 2014 - hybrid television waged a hybrid war and won it, setting standards, professional and ethical, for “adult” television channels that learned to crucify boys precisely from tabloid culture.

The time when Izvestia and the Life TV channel were at the top of the Russian media pyramid can be considered a triumph for Gabrelyanov - not so much as a manager, but as an ideologist and visionary. But it is precisely this role in Russian conditions that turns out to be a curse, because at some point the authorities begin to think that they can cope without him. When the traditions of the newspaper “Life” spread throughout the Russian space, when all official media turned into one huge tabloid, Gabrelyanov became superfluous. The TV channel was closed, Izvestia was taken away, Life broke up into several telegram channels, a sleigh with the inscription “Rose Bud” burned in the Kremlin fireplace.

According to Kashin, Gabrelyanov, the man who set the tone for the development of Russian media in tenths - more than a manager, ideologist and visionary - eventually ceased to be needed by the current government

Gabrelyanov leaves defeated. He did not integrate into the new near-Kremlin configuration, he bet on the wrong people, he believed too much in his own importance in conditions when someone’s independent importance turns out to be a disadvantage. But in today's Russia, every news is like the headline of the newspaper "Life", and every official by default is a hero of the tabloid. “Everything that lives should follow the path of the grain,” and the dead tabloid sprouted thousands of sprouts in the media, in government, and in society. It is not necessary to love Gabrelyanov, but that he is a meaning-forming and style-forming figure of the era - this now seems indisputable.

Original material: TV channel "Rain"

"Kommersant", 08/24/18, “Life.ru is preparing for a new life”

Aram Gabrelyanov wants to sell a stake in the project

Aram Gabrelyanov is negotiating the sale of his stake in the News Media company, which manages the Life.ru website. The project will be relaunched without his participation and will become a platform for bloggers, similar in concept to Yandex.Zen. Life.ru plans to spend up to 7 million rubles on payments to authors. per month.

At the beginning of October, the Life.ru website will be relaunched as a platform for copyrighted content, Anatoly Suleymanov, general director of News Media JSC, which owns the Life.ru domain and trademark, told Kommersant. “Life.ru is no longer a site only for jingoists,” he explains. Any author will be able to upload texts or videos to the site, and neural networks will filter illegal content. Now the site earns 8–12 million rubles from advertising. per month and 5–7 million rubles. ready to pay the authors. “We hope that with the restart we will earn more, in six to nine months we will be able to break even and start earning money,” said Mr. Suleymanov. Editorial materials will remain on the site, but their relationship with copyright will change.

The new concept of Life.ru is similar to Yandex.Zen - a platform for authors who can receive money if their posts receive at least 7 thousand reads in a week. Monetization on Life.ru will be enabled after 2 thousand reads, says project manager Alexander Potapov. He agrees that the model is reminiscent of Zen, but points out the differences: “Most of the Zen feed is not user content, but media to which Yandex sends traffic. We don’t really see the original authors, and the monetization scheme, as far as we know, does not suit everyone. Through original content, we want to give a platform to authoritative bloggers of all views, authors of Telegram channels on various topics, and in addition to top authors, attract people who want to speak out.”

Half of the Yandex.Zen feed consists of publications created on the platform, a representative of this service objects. It has 12 thousand active authors and 7 thousand sites, the feed is formed by an algorithm based on the reader’s preferences, the daily audience is 13 million users. The projected revenue of the service for 2018, calculated from data for May, is 4 billion rubles, Yandex previously reported.

Now Life.ru is a portal with content such as, for example, an investigation about daughters who killed their father, or the story of a grandmother who “attacked a paramedic with an ax.” The audience accustomed to the traditional Life.ru may leave, but in the future, attendance will increase, Alexander Potapov hopes. “The mechanics of the site will change. It will be more like Medium (a platform for social journalism.- “Kommersant”), where the user will be able to create a feed,” he said.

Two employees of the publication told Kommersant that the platform will start in the new format without its founder Aram Gabrelyanov - “neither as a publisher, nor as a shareholder,” since he is close to selling a stake in the project. Kommersant's interlocutors believe that he now owns 25% of News Media JSC and shares in individual projects of the company, for example Super.ru. SPARK-Interfax states that 25% of News Media is owned by a Cypriot company, 75% belongs to the Media+ fund, whose contacts coincide with the data of the National Media Group (NMG), where Mr. Gabrelyanov previously worked. After leaving there in 2017, he took up the Moscow football club Ararat and moved away from the media, Anatoly Suleymanov clarifies. Aram Gabrelyanov himself and the NMG representative declined to comment. A source close to the group emphasized that NMG has no relation to Life.ru either as a shareholder or at the management level.

Payment for content has always been a key problem for the Internet industry, recalls Sergey Efimov, director of marketing technologies at OMD OM Group. “Platforms received content conditionally as a given, since the main part of investment-attractive content is television. In recent years, digital providers have begun to invest more and more in content, with costs growing by 80–150% annually,” he explains. But another trend has become obvious, the expert adds: user-generated content does not have the required level of quality to attract an audience.

Anna Afanasyeva

Aram Gabrelyanov- Russian journalist and businessman-publisher, combining the ability to make circulation on “chernukha” and “jaundice” (exacerbating the degradation of Russians) and patriotic love for the Motherland and for himself, chairman of the board of directors of OJSC “Editorial office of the newspaper “Izvestia””, general director and president publishing house "News Media", president of the holding company "Baltic Media Group", creator of the tabloid - the newspaper "Life".

Aram Ashotovich Gabrelyanov
Date of birth: August 10, 1961
Place of birth: Derbent, Dagestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, USSR
Citizenship of the USSR Russia
Education Moscow State University
OJSC "News Media" company
Position General Director
Company OJSC "Editorial office of the newspaper "Izvestia""
Position Chairman of the Board of Directors
the president
Baltic Media Group LLC
Position President

Back in 1988 Aram Gabrelyanov Graduated from the Faculty of Journalism of Moscow State University with a degree in journalism. He was assigned to work in Ulyanovsk, where he became a correspondent for the Ulyanovsk Komsomolets newspaper, then worked as a secretary there.
On May 22, 1990, the Ulyanovsk regional committee of the Komsomol renamed the newspaper “Ulyanovsky Komsomolets” to “Word of Youth”. Soon the editor-in-chief of the Ulyanovsk youth group became precisely Aram Gabrelyanov, who managed to increase the newspaper's circulation from 9,000 to 210,000 copies. In 1992, the newspaper was privatized by its employees, headed by Aram, and once again changed its name to Simbirsk Provincial Gazette.

In 1995 Aram Gabrelyanov bought the newspapers “Local Time” and “Scythians” in the city of Dimitrovgrad, Ulyanovsk region, on their basis creating the regional publishing holding “Vedomosti-Media”, which later included newspapers from Nizhny Novgorod, Samara, Saratov and Volgograd. According to the Vedomosti newspaper, Gabrelyanov also owned the newspapers “Krasnoyarsky Komsomolets” and “Chas Pik” (St. Petersburg).

Aram Gabrelyanov's move to Moscow

In 1996, Gabrelyanov moved to Moscow and in 1997 began publishing the weekly newspaper Moskovskie Vedomosti. In 2000, the weekly was renamed the newspaper “Life”, which became famous and popular thanks to a series of scandals related to publications about the personal lives of the “stars” of Russian show business. In 2006, the publication's circulation exceeded 2 million copies.

In April 2001 Gabrelyanov together with six newspaper employees, he founded Zhizn Publishing House LLC. In 2005, he resigned from the post of general director and editor-in-chief and in September created the holding company News Media OJSC, which he himself headed. In 2006 Gabrelyanov united into his holding the publications published under the Life brand in 50 cities of Russia, selling 50% - 1 share for $40 million to the co-owner of the UFG investment group Boris Fedorov. In the fall of the same year, the daily tabloid “Your Day” was established. In 2007 - Chairman of the Board of Directors and Editorial Director of the holding, since 2008 - General Director of News Media. In 2008, UFG sold its stake in the News Media holding to a certain “non-market fund of a technical nature,” presumably the National Media Group of St. Petersburg businessman Yuri Kovalchuk.

On March 11, 2008, a new Gabrelyanov's project- information and entertainment Internet portal Life.ru. In the fall of 2009, instead of Life.ru, the information portal Lifenews.ru was launched, a glossy tabloid was opened - the magazine “Heat”, thematic Internet portals LifeSports.ru and LifeShowbiz.ru began operating. At the beginning of March 2010, the holding Gabrelyanova began publishing the business newspaper Marker again.
In April 2011 G Aram Gabrelyanov took the post of Chairman of the Board of Directors of OJSC Editorial Board of the Izvestia Newspaper, owned by the National Media Group. Previously, Gabrelyanov was appointed deputy general director of the National Media Group. After appointment Gabrelyanova, at the end of May 2011, the editorial office moved from Pushkinskaya Square, where it had been located since 1926, to an office center on the territory of the Dux plant in the industrial zone of the Northern Administrative District of Moscow. The move involved laying off most of the employees and hiring new ones. Some of the former journalists called the changes a “symbolic act of violence” and tried to elect Sergei Mostovshchikov as the new editor-in-chief, but after payment of severance pay, the conflict was settled.
January 19, 2015 Aram Gabrelyanov took over the post of president of the Baltic Media Group holding, which became vacant after the death of the company’s founder Oleg Rudnov on January 9.

Conflicts involving Aram Gabrelyanov

In 2011, the Life News portal published photographs from the wedding of State Duma deputy from A Just Russia Oleg Pakholkov, in which another Just Russia deputy Oleg Mikheev was captured in the uniform of the fascist admiral Wilhelm Canaris. Mikheev filed a lawsuit against Gabrelyanov demanding that the photographs be declared invalid, called the owner of Life News a scoundrel on REN TV, and after the filming a fight broke out between Mikheev and Gabrelyanov. Four examinations confirmed the authenticity of photographs of Mikheev in fascist uniform, on the basis of which the court rejected Mikheev’s claim. On counterclaim Gabrelyanova the court ordered Mikheev to compensate him for moral damages and publish a refutation of his statements on REN TV.

On April 9, 2014 it became known that Aram Gabrelyanov decided to close the Ukrainian newspaper “Life” due to the refusal of the local editors to publish pro-Russian materials against the backdrop of the political crisis and the Russian Spring. In particular, Ukrainian journalists did not agree to release the materials sent from Moscow “Protect us, Russia,” “Help Russia,” and “Neo-Bandera dictatorship.” According to Gabrelyanov’s son Ashot, who was the executive director of News Media, the Moscow management of the holding had no political conflict with the Ukrainian editorial office, and the employees explained the refusal to publish materials by the possibility of subsequent application of sanctions against them by the Ukrainian authorities.

Family and personal life of Aram Gabrelyanov

Aram Gabrelyanov married, has two sons - Artyom and Ashot Gabrelyanov. One of his two sons permanently resides in the USA, in New York City. Ashot was the CEO of the LifeNews media resource until September 2014.

Awards of Aram Gabrelyanov

Order of Honor (April 22, 2014) - for high professionalism and objectivity in covering events in the Republic of Crimea.

Tabloid publisher

Well-known tabloid publisher. Since 2001, he has headed the News Media holding, which, in particular, owns the popular tabloids “Life for the Whole Week” and “Your Day,” as well as the Internet information portal Life News. Since February 2011, he has been simultaneously Deputy General Director of the National Media Group holding, and since April 2011, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Izvestia newspaper.

Aram Ashotovich Gabrelyanov was born on August 10, 1961 in the city of Derbent, Dagestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. His grandfather Nikolai Ter-Gabrelyan (during Soviet times, his family settled in Derbent and changed their surname) was mentioned in the media as the founder of a monastery in the village of Tatev in the Armenian historical region of Zangezur.

Little information was published about Gabrelyanov’s life before the second half of the 1980s. It is known that he served in the army, and then studied at the Faculty of Journalism of Moscow State University, which he graduated in 1985 (according to other sources - in 1986 or 1989). Already at the university, Gabrelyanov showed interest in foreign journalism and even fraudulently obtained access to view Western press, reporting the non-existent consent of the heads of the faculty.

In 1985, Gabrelyanov moved to Ulyanovsk, the homeland of his wife, with whom he studied on the same course, and became an intern at the regional newspaper Ulyanovsk Komsomolets, , , . Subsequently, he worked in the publication as a correspondent, head of department, deputy editor, executive secretary, and in 1990 he became editor-in-chief of the newspaper. At the same time, at the plenum of the Ulyanovsk regional committee of the Komsomol, Gabrelyanov proposed transforming “Ulyanovsky Komsomolets” into a new newspaper “Word of Youth” (the press claimed that the idea belonged to his former boss Alexander Kuznetsov), and this proposal was accepted, , . Already in the early 1990s, the publication had the stylistic features of the “yellow press” (the media writing about it mentioned such “Words of Youth” headlines as “Animal Farm on the Bones of a Storyteller,” “Ulyanovsk Poltergeist,” “Swastika on Rubles,” “Man- magnet visiting “Words of Youth”, etc.) .

Gabrelyanov tried to maintain good relations with the authorities of the Ulyanovsk region. Thus, the media noted that in some “old elections to the Supreme Council of the RSFSR” (details were not reported), Gabrelyanov acted as a confidant of Yuri Goryachev, who since the late 80s held the position of chairman of the executive committee of the regional Council of People's Deputies. In the early 1990s, when the Russian President Boris Yeltsin removed Goryachev from his post (by that time he was already the head of the regional administration), Simbirsk Provincial Gazette published material that became the reason for holding a rally in Ulyanovsk in support of the head of the region. After this, a session of the regional Council of People's Deputies demanded that Gabrelyanov be brought to trial. A criminal case was opened against him on charges of incitement, but it did not proceed further, and Yeltsin, who arrived on a visit to Ulyanovsk, “reinstated Goryachev in his position “at the request of the people.” Gabrelyanov’s relationship with Goryachev deteriorated in 1996 (as stated, as a result "domestic quarrel"), after which "Simbirsk Provincial Gazette" began to actively publish anti-governor materials , , .

Gabrelyanov also collaborated with large businesses in the region. In 1997, the Ulyanovsk Narodnaya Gazeta told the story of how Gabrelyanov came to the police and, boasting of his connections in government structures and the fact that he “controls all newspapers,” tried to help employees of the ATM company, whose director he was with, who were accused of extortion. was on good terms.

In 1995, Gabrelyanov bought the newspaper "Local Time" in the city of Dimitrovgrad, Ulyanovsk region (the newspaper of the same name - a subsidiary publication of "Simbirsk Provincial Gazette" - was published at that time in Ulyanovsk itself). At the end of 1995, Gabrelyanov acquired from Kuznetsov half of the information and commercial partnership "SKiF", which owned the popular economic newspaper "Scythians", (according to some sources, Gabrelyanov paid Kuznetsov less than half of the agreed amount). On the basis of "Skifs", the newspaper "Skif" was created in 1998, and its founder was exclusively JSC "SGV", and not the partnership "SKiF".

During the same period, Gabrelyanov created the Vedomosti-Media holding, which became the owner of many newspapers in other regions. In this regard, the following were mentioned: "Vedomosti of the Nizhny Novgorod Province", "Vedomosti of the Samara Province", "Rostov Courier", "Krasnoyarsk Komsomolets", the St. Petersburg newspaper "Chas Rush", the children's illustrated magazine "Watermelon" (originally called "Seryozhka", according to some given in honor of the grandson of Governor Goryachev), the newspaper "Local Time" in Saratov, Dimitrovgrad, Yekaterinburg, Cheboksary, Yoshkar-Ola, Stavropol, Novosibirsk, Lipetsk, etc. , , , , . According to Gabrelyanov himself, when selecting publications, he did not conduct special marketing research, but only chose large cities and sent his employees there.

In 1997, Gabrelyanov moved to Moscow, where he registered the company "Editorial office of the newspaper Vedomosti". In the same 1997, Vedomosti-Media began publishing the weekly Moskovskie Vedomosti. As a result of the 1998 default, Inkombank, in which Gabrelyanov kept fixed assets, suffered significantly. According to the businessman-publisher, he lost about five million dollars, after which, to save the enterprise, he had to “sell all his cars, mortgage his apartment and borrow from his comrades.”

In 1999, it was reported that Gabrelyanov's holding owned twenty-nine (according to other sources - nineteen) publications; the bulk of them were the “yellow press”. The corporation was also mentioned as a co-founder of the Ulyanovsk television and radio company Gubernsky Channel, but Gabrelyanov lost interest in the channel, which supported the regional administration, back in 1996, and in 1999 Vedomosti-Media initiated its bankruptcy.

Also in 1999, Gabrelyanov returned to Ulyanovsk as editor-in-chief of Simbirsk Provincial Gazette. At the end of 2000, the press controlled by Gabrelyanov took an active part in the campaign that preceded the elections of the governor of the Ulyanovsk region and the mayor of Ulyanovsk. He was then elected as the new governor to replace Goryachev. Vladimir Shamanov, whose candidacy was supported by Gabrelyanov. However, Gabrelyanov failed to work well with the new city leadership, and after the elections he returned to Moscow.

Although Moskovskie Vedomosti was originally intended to be a “respectable” newspaper, in 2000 it was transformed into the popular daily Life, for which a publishing house of the same name was created. The format of “Life” (including design, fonts and headings) was borrowed from the famous British tabloid The Sun (in 2002, articles about this were also published in the British press). Gabrelyanov became the editor-in-chief and general director of the Life Publishing House. In addition, on the basis of this publishing house in 2001, he created the holding company News Media OJSC. From the same year, some other publications owned by Gabrelyanov began to be published under the Life brand: in particular, in 2001, Simbirsk Provincial Gazette was renamed Life. Ulyanovsk.

The newspaper "Life" quickly became one of the main Russian tabloids. Already in 2004, it was one of the five most popular newspapers among Russians, along with its main competitors Komsomolskaya Pravda, Arguments and Facts, Moskovsky Komsomolets and AIDS-Info. Like the Simbirsk Provincial Gazette, Life owed its success to the presence of a network of paid informants who provided the editorial office with exclusive materials. By 2005, Life had editorial offices in fifty-two cities of Russia and a representative office in Kyiv; the newspaper's editions in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Rostov-on-Don and Yekaterinburg were daily, and weekly in other regions. At the same time, on the Internet you can find allegations that in the first half of the 2000s, the publishing house “Life” hid a significant part of its income, for which it, among other things, used advertising of various kinds of “dubious services.”

At the end of 2005, there were personnel changes at the Life Publishing House, as a result of which Gabrelyanov left the posts of general director and editor-in-chief, and became chairman of the company's board of directors.

In the mid-2000s, Gabrelyanov negotiated the sale of part of News Media with the head of the famous company Axel Springer Russia Regina von Flemming, however, the conclusion of the deal was delayed - according to the head of the holding, “due to German pedantry.” In the spring of 2006, fifty percent minus one share of News Media was sold to the UFG Private Equity Fund, an investment fund created by former Finance Minister Boris Fedorov and his partners. The transaction amount, according to some sources, amounted to forty million dollars. However, the legality of this deal was soon called into question: at the beginning of 2007, the former head of the social life department of the newspaper Zhizn, Irina Mayorova (Eremina), stated that back in 2004, Gabrelyanov fraudulently became the owner of twenty percent of the shares of News Media that belonged to her, which he subsequently disposed of. Mayorova contacted the prosecutor's office, but they refused to initiate criminal proceedings against her.

The funds obtained through the sale of a large block of shares allowed Gabrelyanov to increase the circulation of his publications and conduct a large-scale advertising campaign with a budget of about eight million dollars. At the same time, the newspaper "Life" was rebranded - articles on "criminal topics" and explicit "sexual materials" were removed from it, thanks to which the publication turned into a weekly newspaper "for family reading" Life for the Whole Week. taken from the British edition of the News of the World, but soon, due to claims from the British, it had to be changed... Many well-known journalists were involved in working on the publication: in particular, for some time a journalist wrote a political column in it Oleg Kashin. In addition to the newspaper “Life for the Whole Week,” Gabrelyanov’s holding in 2006 began publishing the daily “Your Day,” regional editions of which at that time were published in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Rostov-on-Don and Yekaterinburg.

On April 1, 2007, Gabrelyanov left the post of general director of News Media (which, since the beginning of that year, regularly appeared in the press also under the name News Media-Rus) and became chairman of the board of directors and editorial director of the holding. The vacated post of CEO was taken by UFG Private Equity Fund representative Andrey Mushkin. In 2007, Gabrelyanov’s holding was no longer limited to the territory of Russia and also had subsidiaries in Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Belarus. In February 2008, reports appeared in the press about the creation of a new JSC News Media, coordinating projects both in Russia and abroad; Gabrelyanov became the general director of the new News Media.

Back in 2006, Gabrelyanov announced his intention to use the money received from the sale of News Media shares to open his own printing houses, form his own distribution network, and also to create regional schools for young journalists. However, Gabrelyanov abandoned most of these plans, and the money was spent on a new Internet portal, Life.ru, largely based on exclusive videos (it was launched in the spring of 2008). Gabrelyanov said that the portal was based on the idea of ​​organizing its own operational news agency and, at the same time, creating “Media 2.0”, in which site visitors could provide their own materials and receive money for it. Already in June 2008, Life.ru took seventh place in popularity in the Russian segment of the Internet - only search engines and social networks were ahead of it. In October 2009, the Life.ru portal was divided into three parts: the Lifenews.ru agency specializing in “breaking news”, the Lifeshowbiz.ru website dedicated to show business news, and the sports website Lifesport.ru.

In September 2009, it was announced that News Media was launching its own journalism courses. Both Gabrelyanov himself and other News Media employees were supposed to teach them. Gabrelyan also intended to invite a famous journalist as a possible teacher Sergei Dorenko(no information was found about his participation in the project - editor's note).

During the same period, Gabrelyanov’s holding launched two more projects. In the fall of 2009, the secular magazine “Heat”, announced long before, appeared, the pop singer was announced as editor-in-chief Philip Kirkorov, . On March 1, 2010, News Media began publishing the business online newspaper Marker, which, according to its creators, was supposed to differ from other similar publications in exclusivity and efficiency, as well as in that it was designed for a youth audience. In September 2010, News Media OJSC became one of the first companies in Russia to begin selling video materials to TV channels: the first channel to enter into such an agreement with Gabrelyanov’s company was headed by Vladimir Kulistikov NTV.

Back in the summer of 2008, UFG Private Equity Fund sold its stake in News Media for $80 million to the National Media Group (NMG) holding, controlled by the co-owner and chairman of the bank's board of directors. Russia " Yuri Kovalchuk. The holding by that time already managed the television channels REN-TV and Petersburg-Channel Five, and was soon to receive control of the Izvestia newspaper, a controlling stake in which Kovalchuk’s structures received in the spring of the same 2008. However, the head of News Media insisted for several years that he did not know to whom exactly Fedorov’s company sold its share in his holding.

In February 2011, Gabrelyanov was appointed deputy general director of NMG, overseeing Izvestia and the holding’s Internet projects. At the same time, the media manager continued to manage his own holding company, News Media. In April of the same year, Gabrelyanov headed the board of directors of Izvestia. At the beginning of May 2011, it became known that next month an agreement would be concluded under which News Media would be in charge of publishing Izvestia. It was reported that the holding would cover all costs of publishing the newspaper. As Gabrelyanov clarified, Izvestia shareholders do not plan to sell the newspaper.

In May 2012, the media wrote about Gabrelyanov’s intention to integrate the work of the editorial office of Izvestia and other publications of the News Media holding, including the portal Life News,,. These plans caused disagreement from both the publication’s employees (more than half of them quit after the sale of Izvestia) and its editor-in-chief Alexandra Malyutina, who resigned from his post in June. His place was taken by the editor-in-chief of the Marker portal, Alexander Potapov.

Some journalists noted the pro-Kremlin attitude of Gabrelyanov's publications; in addition, there were hints in the media about his connections with the party." United Russia" In an interview with the OpenSpace portal, Gabrelyanov said the following about Prime Minister: " Putin- the pope of the nation, nothing can be brought against him." According to some information, before the launch of the magazine "Heat" Gabrelyanov consulted with the deputy head of the Russian Presidential Administration who was in charge of media issues Vladislav Surkov, it was also reported that they had a "good relationship." Gabrelyanov himself said in an interview that he likes to “talk to him, just an intelligent person,” sometimes asks him for advice, but Surkov does not give any instructions about the policy of his publications, this is “bullshit.” At one time, News Media journalists were denied access to the president’s press pool, but according to some reports, thanks to Surkov, they were finally allowed in, and Gabrelyanov began to take part in regular meetings of the country’s leader with the editors-in-chief. At the end of 2011 - beginning of 2012, the Life News portal published incriminating evidence on oppositionists who were preparing protest rallies against the results of the parliamentary elections.

Gabrelyanov's publications were criticized for being unethical, and their authors for unprofessionalism and illiteracy. In 2010, Kashin published a screenshot of an article on the Life News website on his blog - its headline reported “provocation” at the rally. Kashin’s publication became one of the reasons for Gabrelyanov’s criticism of his employees at the planning meeting - his speech, replete with obscene expressions, was recorded on a voice recorder and ended up on the network.

Repeatedly, the heroes of News Media materials have filed lawsuits, accusing the holding's publications of interfering with privacy and disseminating false information , , , , . Gabrelyanov himself insisted that the personal life of a public figure should not be inviolable for journalists.

Gabrelyanov is a laureate of the national award in the field of media business "Media Manager of Russia" for 2006.

It is known that Gabrelyanov speaks the Zangezur dialect of the Armenian language, attends an Armenian church and is actively interested in Armenian culture, but according to data from 2006, he has only been to Armenia once.

Aram Gabrelyanov is married and has two sons. The eldest, Artem Gabrelyanov, graduated from the Faculty of Journalism of Moscow State University in the summer of 2009 with a diploma thesis “Tabloidization of modern Russian Internet media”, however, back in 2008 he was mentioned as deputy editor-in-chief and editor of the international news department of Life.ru. Artem Gabrelyanov also wrote articles for glossy magazines. In 2011, he also became editor-in-chief of News Media's comics magazine Bubble. The youngest son of Aram Gabrelyanov, Ashot, born in 1989, has been published in News Media publications since he was fifteen (then he presented a report about a drunken American director Quentin Tarantino). At nineteen, Ashot Gabrelyanov became editor-in-chief of Life News; in 2012, it was reported that he was also the executive director of the News Media holding.

Used materials

Alexander Malyutin left the post of editor-in-chief of the Izvestia newspaper. - RIA News, 19.06.2012

Alexander Potapov became the new editor-in-chief of Izvestia. - Interfax, 19.06.2012

"I have a mission." - Lenta.ru, 28.05.2012

Anastasia Matveeva, Pyotr Kanaev, Alina Chernoivanova, Olga Tanas. Izvestia is not integrated. - Gazeta.Ru, 22.05.2012

Will Izvestia change its editor-in-chief? - OpenSpace, 22.05.2012

Roman Badanin, Ivan Osipov. Izvestia may change its editor-in-chief. - Forbes, 21.05.2012

Stepan Bukhnin. Gabrelyanov says. - Scandals.ru, 26.01.2012

A viral recording of Gabrelyanov’s planning meeting appeared on the Internet. - Arguments and Facts, 26.01.2012

Nemtsov wanted to “punch in the face” of the editor-in-chief of Life News, who called his girlfriend a “call girl.” - NEWSru.com, 26.01.2012

Anastasia Zhokhova, Ivan Prosvetov. Aram Gabrelyanov created the most popular tabloid in the country. What did it cost him? - Russian Forbes, 20.12.2011

Andrey Artemov. "Scum and vegetables." The opposition leader assessed his supporters. - Arguments and Facts, 20.12.2011

Oleg Kashin. Aram Gabrelyanov: “Putin is the pope of the nation, you can’t show anything to him.” - OpenSpace.ru, 11.07.2011

The Izvestia newspaper will be published by Gabrelyanov's holding company, which makes Life News and the Life newspaper. - Gazeta.Ru, 05.05.2011

Valery Weisberg. Aram Gabrelyanov and Alexander Malyutin headed Izvestia. - Marker, 21.04.2011

Ekaterina Sevryukova, Valentina Borisova. Aram Gabrelyanov will become a top manager of the National Media Group. - RBC daily, 11.02.2011

Pavel Belavin, Sergei Sobolev. Aram Gabrelyanov received Izvestia. - Kommersant-Online, 11.02.2011

Marina Naumova. “Who owns half of my business, I don’t know.” - Slon.ru, 10.02.2011

Anton Petrov. Life is like a miracle. - OpenSpace.ru, 04.02.2011

Ksenia Boletskaya. "Life" on TV. - Vedomosti, 20.09.2010. - № 176 (2874)

Famous people who won lawsuits against the media. Reference. - RAPSI, 10.06.2010

Eh Aram Ashotovich. - Oleg Kashin's blog (kashin.livejournal.com), 01.06.2010

On March 1, a new project of News Media-Rus LLC was launched - the business newspaper Marker. - Guild of Periodical Publishers (gipp.ru), 01.03.2010

Today in Ulyanovsk, at the age of 72, the first governor of the region, Yuri Goryachev, died. - Rossiyskaya newspaper - Middle Volga, 20.01.2010

Anastasia Alekseeva. The best people in town: News must be exclusive. - Private Correspondent, 12.01.2010