Journalists call it “burying the lead.” That’s when you take the most important fact about a story, and squirrel it away at the bottom.
To wit: this morning, the New York Times reported that Russian president Vladimir Putin has anointed first deputy prime minister Dmitri Medvedev as his chosen successor in next March’s presidential election.
The Times leads with the fact that Medvedev a noted legal scholar and a proponent of stronger links with Europe: unlike former KGB man Putin, he is not a creature of the reactionary intelligence system. He is also not a cosmonaut, a trucker, a ballet dancer or an orange juicer. He is, as the Times slips in right at the bottom of the story, chairman of JSC Gazprom.
Gazprom isn’t just some small energy firm. It has exclusive rights to export Russia’s natural gas, a vital power and heating source for several neighboring countries. This stranglehold has been seen as a new weapon in Russian foreign policy, like when it crippled the Belarusian economy by cutting off the supply over unpaid bills. The firm aims for a $1 trillion turnover, and plans to manage this be expanding into Europe – a move that has caused shudders throughout the European Union. As of July, Gazprom has been allowed to run its own security force, which critics within the Russian Duma have called a corporate army.
Still, least Medvedev wasn’t a knee-cracker for the KGB.
This article appears in December 7 • 2007.
