Rumors of death were premature

The first e-mail didn't actually come as a surprise. The second one did.

Bad news is never a surprise from Central Asia, especially where newspapers and journalism are concerned.

The "stans," that handful of independent countries carved out of a backwater of the Soviet empire, are one tough neighborhood.

All of the post-Soviet world is a tough neighborhood, but it seems to get tougher as one moves east.

Moldova is tough enough, but Georgia and Armenia are far tougher. And places like Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan are among the most difficult environments on the face of the earth in which to attempt to commit some independent journalism.

About 18 months ago, the news was that a young friend - a participant in more than one of my seminars on behalf of the International Center for Journalists - had been assassinated.

This time, it wasn't the death of a journalist; it was of the death of a newspaper.

Vechernaya Gazeta, a weekly newspaper in Temirtau in northern Kazakhstan, the e-mail said, had suddenly closed its doors.

This time, the apparent culprit was not the government or political operatives but the global economic crisis.

That was especially upsetting because Vechernaya Gazeta had all the genetic markers for success. Its leaders, Sasha and Slava, knew what they were doing. Sasha had been a teacher, and Slava worked in radio. They received some training from Western organizations and launched their newspaper in 1998.

It's difficult to imagine a more hostile environment. Authoritarian government, corrupt local officials, next to no commercial development, and readers who were accustomed to newspapers that either parroted the official government line or argued party philosophy.

And Temirtau must be seen to be believed.

An industrial city with a wealth of pollution in its air and water, its definition of "good times" would never match ours. That's not surprising, really. It's pretty much a suburb of Karaganda, a city that was founded as a slave labor penal colony to mine iron ore.

As I said, it's one tough neighborhood.

But when I visited there in 2002 with former AP foreign correspondent George Krimsky and retired New York Times reporter Chris Wren, we saw every reason to be encouraged.

Sasha and Slava had taken to heart the concept of operating their newspaper as an independent business, treating credibility as an asset, selling news to readers, and selling access to those readers to advertisers.

They were light years ahead of most of their peers.

Vechernaya Gazeta soon had a press run of 5,500. That in a city of about 120,000 may not sound like a lot, but I'm guessing each copy was read by 8-10 people. A foothold had been established, and there was reason to be optimistic.

I wrote to Sasha on Saturday telling him how sorry I was to hear the bad news, and I was feeling pretty glum Saturday afternoon as I worked on this column. Then the second e-mail arrived.

That was Monday morning, and it was from Temirtau.

It seems that rumors of Verchernaya Gazeta's death were greatly exaggerated.

Turns out that Sasha simply made a tough business decision and closed the Karaganda edition of the paper. Vechernaya Gazeta is not only alive. It's doing well.

"We still sell more copies in Temirtau than all other city papers together," Sasha wrote.

These days, every newspaper faces extraordinary challenges. Little things like survival and continuing to serve our readers don't seem so little any more. They're at the top of the agenda.

But the conditions we face are a cakewalk compared to what my friend Sasha faces daily in Temirtau.

On my desk at home, I have a framed copy of the front page of the first edition of Sasha's newspaper. He gave it to me in Temirtau.

And whenever I think American newspapers have it rough, I'll look at it and get my perspective back.

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