Blogger, Former head of the publication “Gorod+”
"Companies"
"News"
Kamnev does not comment on information about his departure from Gorod+
On January 10, telegram channels spread information about Nikolai Kamnev’s resignation from the post of head of the Gorod+ publication. “Moika78” turned to the St. Petersburg blogger for an official comment.
Nikolai Kamnev neither confirmed nor denied information about his departure. From official comments he abstained from publication.
Navalny’s headquarters in St. Petersburg explained how money is laundered through the Gorod+ portal
The Internet portal “City+” receives huge amounts of money from the St. Petersburg budget, but produces content that is of no interest to anyone. This was stated by employees of Alexei Navalny’s headquarters in St. Petersburg, publishing a corresponding investigation.
Navalny’s activists found out that huge amounts of money are allocated from the budget for the maintenance of the “City+” portal. In 2018 alone, 70 million budget money was allocated for this project. However, the news on the publication’s website is a reprint of press releases from various Smolny committees, and videos on its YouTube channel receive an average of 20 views.
The Internet portal “City+” is headed by the famous blogger Nikolai Kamnev, who is known in “LiveJournal” as “Fima Psychopath”. Kamnev also turned out to be the personal PR man of former vice-governor Igor Albin. The basis for hiring a blogger to a government agency to work as the director of “City+” was a personal statement, which also raises a number of questions.
Troll in the big city
A new manager working for the media resources of the St. Petersburg government decided to use hype. “Psychopath” took over the development of the Smolny Internet television channel. Every year the city spends about a billion rubles on its own media.
There are new additions to the ranks of St. Petersburg state employees. In February on information resource“City+” quietly changed its leader. Smolny Internet broadcasting, the launch of which cost tens of millions, is now run by blogger Nikolai Kamnev, formerly known as Fima Psychopath.
Members of the St. Petersburg government, with rare exceptions, are non-public people. The vector is set by Governor Georgy Poltavchenko, confident that deeds are more valuable than words. But nothing human, like PR support, is alien to Smolny, and under the wing of the city government there is an extensive media system.
Deputies, officials and just good people: who voted in St. Petersburg on March 18
The period allotted for Russians to vote in the presidential election is drawing to a close. If ordinary citizens can postpone the expression of their will until the evening, then officials and deputies, one might say, are obliged to go in the forefront - from the very morning.
Deputies of the city parliament and the State Duma were the first to vote in St. Petersburg. The latter, by the way, were traveling to the city on the Neva from Moscow and managed to get ahead of local officials. Who and when visited the polling station in St. Petersburg - read the material from Moika78.
How blogger Fima the psychopath “promotes” Vice Governor Igor Albin
Prior to this, a company associated with Kamnev signed a half-million dollar contract for promotion of the State Unitary Enterprise Gorelektrotrans on social networks. Even earlier, Fima the Psychopath appeared on the list of bloggers receiving money from the Nazis.
In ancient times, when Facebook, Twitter and VKontakte had not yet declared themselves and LiveJournal was the most important platform for bloggers, Nikolai Kamnev’s blog “Fima Psychopath” was one of the most popular in St. Petersburg. Three years ago, the liberal part of the Runet enthusiastically discussed the opened mail of the press secretary of the then still living Nashi movement, Kristina Potupchik. This correspondence between Nashists and Kremlin curators included estimates with the names of bloggers who received money for their posts. Including the blog of Fima the psychopath.
Nikolay Kamnev was blocked by Facebook for “Khokhols”
The account of St. Petersburg blogger Nikolai Kamnev, known online under the nickname fima-psuchopadt, was blocked on June 30 by the Facebook administration for a month for violating community rules. The blogger himself does not agree with the decision of the social network administration.
As Kamnev told Lenizdat.Ru, he considers the use of the word “Khokhols” to be the reason for the blocking. “Facebook used to block people for two Russian words they used, but now a third one has been added,” he told Lenizdat.Ru. “I wrote to them about my disagreement, but nothing can be done about blocking for 30 days.” On June 30, the following post was deleted from the blogger’s Facebook message feed:
The correspondence between the Perm mayor's office and Navalny surprised many. Even St. Petersburg
The mayor's office of Perm was surprised by the intelligence of its communication with representatives of blogger Alexei Navalny: the day before, the St. Petersburg agency "SPb Media" published copies of correspondence between the city administration and the applicants of the rally. The tone of the letter itself is amazing. “Dear Alexey Anatolyevich! The Perm city administration received information from social networks that on November 24, 2017, you are planning to arrive in our city for the purpose of holding a public event. We ask you to influence the organizers of a public event with your participation in Perm.”
Nikolai Kamnev, general director of the State Budgetary Institution “City +”, for the maintenance of which 70 million rubles a year are spent from the budget of St. Petersburg, wished his critics that their “ass would be torn apart”
06/15/18 scandalNikolai Kamnev, in the past a well-known blogger who spoke under the pseudonym Fima-Psychopath, and now the chief PR man of Smolny, general director of the state budgetary institution "City +", suffered for two weeks before finally responding to the publication of "Interest" about ineffective spending by the authorities St. Petersburg budget funds in the media sector. And, as always happens after a long period of abstinence, Kamnev broke through.
Our article talked, in particular, about the fact that the maintenance of the website “City +”, which is positioned as “electronic television that talks about the positive aspects of St. Petersburg life”, but in fact is a selection of boring video interviews with officials and those close to Smolny businessmen allocated 70,227,700 rubles from the city budget in 2018. With such colossal funding, “City +” has very few visitors (if you believe website analysis services - about 2 thousand per day) and, apparently, even the officials themselves do not look at it.
This afternoon, Nikolai Kamnev, apparently forgetting that he is no longer Fima-Psychopath, but the general director of a state institution, burst out on Facebook with a large post in which he said that some envious people were “calling” his website “Zastoy-TV” (that’s what he and was named “Interesting” in the publication), and wished that “the ill-wishers’ ass would be torn apart.”
The rudeness committed by Kamnev is not at all surprising. Surely other Smolny officials are thinking about something similar when reading independent media. They think, but they don’t make it public. Although excesses do occur periodically.
In November, Interestant wrote about how the director of the State Budgetary Institution “Center for Improving the Efficiency of Use of State Property” Dmitry Nozhevnikov spoke about businessmen engaged in retail trade (in his opinion, illegal). “The governor set the task - to begin military operations.” “You could say there is a war going on in the city.” “The task is to clean up the city.” “Everyone needs to be afraid.” “We are on the front line, and I think sooner or later we will win this war.” Nozhevnikov’s tirades shocked the business community at the time. And now the director of another state budgetary institution is threatening the journalistic community with “tearing their ass.”
We don’t know what Kamnev was thinking when he posted his post on Facebook, but the fact that a newly minted official considers it possible to speak publicly in such a manner once again speaks of a clear failure of personnel work in Smolny.
By the way, after the publication of “Interesting”, Phima the Psychopath probably had to work hard. The number of views of individual video interviews of officials on YouTube has increased sharply since June 2. We wrote that for the whole of May, only 28 people watched the recording of Kamnev’s conversation with the head of the Central District, Andrei Khlutkov, but now there is a different figure - 2797 views. Thus, in just two weeks the increase in views was almost 10,000 percent. We must understand that such figures are unattainable naturally, but by technical and financial means - very much so.
True, Kamnev seemed to only have enough strength for Andrei Khlutkov and Chairman of the Committee on Informatization and Communications Denis Chamara (increase from 103 to 1099 views) - the rest of the “official” interviews remained at approximately the same levels. In particular, no respect was shown to the leaders of other districts of the city. The head of the Nevsky district, Alexey Gulchuk, added 16 views on YouTube in two weeks (it was 133, now it is 149), the head of the Kirovsky district Sergei Ivanov - even less, only 5 views (it was 46, it is now 51). So the State Budgetary Institution “City +” still has some work to do. The main thing, to paraphrase Kamnev, is not to overstrain yourself.
It seems that both the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation and the Audit Chamber of St. Petersburg have something to work on. Smolny's spending on such dubious PR, in our opinion, deserves the closest attention of these organizations.
Alexey NIKOLAEV,
Internet magazine "Interestant"
The Chamber of Control and Accounts of St. Petersburg has published an inspection schedule for 2019. In a few months, St. Petersburg State Budgetary Institution “Gorod+” will begin to check. Meanwhile, the director of this institution, Nikolai Kamnev, ends his contract this year. Kamnev did not answer whether it will be extended.
In the 3rd-4th quarter of 2019, the Chamber of Control and Accounts (CAC) examined how legally and effectively the St. Petersburg State Budgetary Institution “City+” spent budget money. The KSP press service explained to our publication that the auditors are interested in the activities of “City+” in 2017-2018 and in the expired period (at the time of the start of the audit) in 2019.
Since the spring of 2017, Nikolai Kamnev, known in St. Petersburg as a blogger under the nickname Fima Psychopath, has been heading the St. Petersburg State Budgetary Institution “City+”. It is interesting that it was on January 10, when the PCB was informed about the upcoming inspection, that information appeared in telegram channels that Kamnev would soon leave his post.
The head of Gorod+ himself, in a conversation with a Moika78 correspondent, did not deny this information. The governor's press secretary, Andrei Kibitov, said that he had no information about Kamnev's possible resignation. The press service of Vice Governor Alexander Govorunov (supervising “City+”) was also unable to comment on this information.
On the city administration website, in the list of subordinate institutions, Kamnev is still listed as the director of the State Budgetary Institution. The goals of “City+” are also indicated there - “material and technical support for information support” for the activities of the governor.
Screenshot of the St. Petersburg administration website
For these purposes, the media under the leadership of Nikolai Kamnev received 70.2 million rubles in 2018, that is, almost 6 million rubles per month.
For that kind of money, Kamnev’s repairs ensured traffic to the Gorod+ website at the level of 80 thousand people per month, and their videos, including interviews with famous businessmen and officials, receive an average of 100 views in a couple of months.
Statistics of visits to the City+ portal. Photo: SimilarWeb screenshot
For comparison, the online editorial office of the Petersburg Diary newspaper spends 1.5 million budget rubles per month, and the website traffic spbdnevnik.ru reaches 800 thousand people monthly.
Nikolai Kamnev had the opportunity to head the State Budgetary Institution with an interesting destiny. Questions for “City+” began to appear almost immediately after its creation in 2012. In particular, the head of the St. Petersburg branch of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, Dmitry Sukharev, drew attention in 2015 to the fact that “City+” received 9 million rubles from the budget, but the resource’s attendance at that time did not exceed 100 people per month.
In addition, Sukharev noted then that Maria Varzegova, who was in charge of the publication at that time, is at the same time the founder of another publication - Dialogue News Agency (legal entity Media Dialog LLC).
Message from the Zaks.Ru portal. Photo: screenshot
As the media wrote, anti-corruption fighters were attracted by a strange coincidence - Dialogue news agency often won City+ competitions. FBK claimed that Varzegova’s company had received contracts worth 16 million rubles by 2015.
Apparently, Nikolai Kamnev failed to change the situation with the contractors. So, in the last days of December 2018, under the leadership of Nikolai Kamnev, a competition was announced and held for the production of 100 videos in 2019.
The contract worth 2.9 million rubles went to Media-Dialog LLC, according to materials from the government procurement portal.
We would like to add that the press service of the control and accounts chamber “Moyke78” explained that based on the results of the inspection, all materials are sent to the supervisory authorities, in particular, to the prosecutor’s office, tax and antimonopoly departments.
A blogger is not someone who creates an account for himself somewhere. A person becomes a blogger when he understands the value of an opinion
I really liked the idea of the announced master class, but to be honest, I was afraid that it would end up being a failure. How to convince that this blogger with “strong” posts, slaps on the head to the eternal values of Nosik, Navalny and Spartak can take a completely balanced approach to conversations about social networks? Is it worth bringing it to a region with practically the lowest Internet penetration? Who should he talk to about social media if the largest blogging event in Saransk has never brought together more than 14 people?
As a result, there was interest in the meeting (after all, this is the first official visit to Saransk of a “foreign” blogger in general; even bloggers we already knew from Penza came), the psychopath turned out to be a very calm and pleasant Nikolai Kamnev, and there were a lot of people willing to participate: approx. 30-40 people.
I don’t think there is any point in retelling Nikolai’s master class. For example, I completely agree with one of the participants who said that it is very useful to hear from the outside what you yourself have guessed. In general, for me, the main indicator is not the information itself, but how many ideas were born in the process of perceiving it. So everything here is also very effective!
I liked the questions. And the naive ones: “At what age can a child go online?”, and the uncompromising ones: “Where is the money?”
We spent quite some time discussing Social Media Marketing and whether we could trust an SMM specialist whose effectiveness depends on certain unmeasurable parameters.
We discussed officials and their presence on social networks. Nikolai claims that if the idea is conveyed correctly, the official himself will become imbued with it, and it is no longer possible to drag him away from the same Twitter. For feedback- priceless. By the way, I heard a similar thought yesterday at the Izhevsk LiveJournal school: the development of the blogosphere is faster in those regions where there is a “leader” - a high-status blogger, whom others begin to follow. Unfortunately, it has not yet been possible to shake up Mordovia in this regard.
We talked about video blogs. I don't consider them promising. Or at least not massively. That's for sure. It's not so much the format (which I find inconvenient) but the volume. From the 1st year of “Journalism”, teachers hammered into it that a person strives to save language resources. Now that I, a lover of 7,000-character texts, have learned to put almost any thought into 140 characters on Twitter, I understand that this is really so. So if the video catches on, it will only be for a duration of a couple of tens of seconds.
Trying to regulate the Internet is a dead end. How is it in China? If Russia allocates money for the “great Chinese firewall”, it will simply be stolen
We returned several times to the topic of local news and its significance. Unfortunately, this niche is not occupied by anyone either.
On the issue of objectivity/subjectivity of information, Nikolay cited good example about fans of sweaters with red deer. Indeed, social networks are an endless variety of layers of interests that not only may not intersect, but may not even suspect each other’s existence. So everyone can find the information they need for themselves.
But I probably don’t agree about the state’s attempts to regulate the Internet. The path may be a dead end, but in some countries it brings exactly the results that states were counting on. And in our country, where telephone rights are above the law, it costs nothing to imprison bloggers at all - especially since the process was tried on journalists. And this is also a regulatory option.
And, of course, we talked about the problems that the Internet provokes.
In general, it seems to me that the communication was successful. There were many familiar faces in the hall (yes, almost all of them!), I had not seen some bloggers for a very long time and was glad to meet them. By the way, during the break I went to meet some young people whom I mistook for journalists. And wow, one of them turned out to be nick_otin . Let's run away from here! In fact, in the minute and a half that we had time to talk, Nikolai gave the impression of a completely calm and adequate person.
