letter to the publisher

The article focuses on the origins of national journalistic criticism – the reflections of N. M. Karamzin, V. A. Zhukovsky and other editors of Vestnik Evropy (Herald of Europe) on the journal, on the mission of a socio-political publication. The features of the genre ‘letter to the publisher’ are considered as characteristic of the early XIXth century form of media-critical reflection.

The article analyzes the media-critical texts of M. Pogodin’s Moskovsky Vestnik (Moscow Herald) and identifies the criteria for evaluating journalistic work and works of journalistic creativity, typical for the first third of the 19th century – the period of the journalistic criticism formation. Two most popular genres in journalistic criticism of that time are considered – a letter to the publisher and a review of the periodical press.