Assignment of Pustilnik

On March 11, 2009 RIA Novosti announced assigning a new editor-in-chief of the resource, Marina Pustilnik. The explanation included:
The new politics which included closing the free forum and establishing premoderation caused the "nucleus" of the reader audience of Inosmi to migrate to a new resource InoForum

InoForum

InoForum — independent internet resource, which searches for, translates and publishes in Russian articles from foreign editions, first of all the ones that are political, related to Russia or the attitude towards Russia in various countries, as well as readers comments and forums...

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Speaking against the new editorial policy, the readers united and wrote the open letter to the RIA Novosti heads, that included among other stuff the quotes of the new editor-in-chief that as readers believed reflected her views and intentions:

"...today media resources get more and more interested in what's called user generated content — what's emphasized by the success of such project as nytimesinmoscow.livejournal.com that causes the delight of the New York Times bosses. I would like the InoSmi readers to be those opinion makers that I would manage to trade in exchange for the content legalization."

"...but I lived for six years in the U.S. and I can guess that my [information] selection is greater than yours any way."

"...I am not going to make excuses before you. If you and your colleagues at the forum want to exchange the nationalistic chatter and make yourselves and others sure that all is well — welcome. I work in the news now for 10 years and I know for sure there's no truth in the news. And everything depends only on who shouted more loud."

While prior to the depicted events the resource enjoyed about 700,000 visits and 150,000 visitors a day, those numbers got decreased approximately 1.5 times in few days.