Infamous paper: Second Son Paper Trail Revision – Sucker Punch Productions

inFamous Paper Trail — map | inFamous Paper Trail — inFamous: Second Son Game Guide & Walkthrough

Areas tied to the inFamous Paper Trail (side missions).

1.1 Starting point for the first inFamous Paper Trail mission.

1.2 Crime scene examined during the first inFamous Paper Trail mission.

2.1 Starting point for the second inFamous Paper Trail mission.

2.2 Crime scene examined during the second inFamous Paper Trail mission.

2.3 Tunnel occupied by drug dealers. You must visit this location while completing the second inFamous Paper Trail mission.

3.1 Starting point for the third inFamous Paper Trail mission.

3.2 Theatre building visited during the third inFamous Paper Trail mission.

4.1 Starting point for the fourth inFamous Paper Trail mission.

4.2 Crime scene examined during the fourth inFamous Paper Trail mission.

5.1, 6.1, 17.1, 18.1 Starting point for the fifth, sixth, seventeenth and eighteenth inFamous Paper Trail mission.

5.2 Crime scene examined during the fifth inFamous Paper Trail mission.

6.2 Entrance to Eugene’s basement used during the sixth inFamous Paper Trail mission.

7.1 Starting point for the seventh inFamous Paper Trail mission.

7.2 Crime scene examined during the seventh inFamous Paper Trail mission.

8.1 Starting point for the eighth inFamous Paper Trail mission.

8.2 Location of a hidden camera that needs to be found during the eighth inFamous Paper Trail mission.

9.1 Starting point for the ninth inFamous Paper Trail mission.

9.2 Location of the senator’s car. You visit this location while completing the ninth inFamous Paper Trail mission.

10.1 Starting point for the tenth inFamous Paper Trail mission.

10.2 Area where you find the origami dove while completing the tenth inFamous Paper Trail mission.

11.1 Starting point for the eleventh inFamous Paper Trail mission.

11.2 Area where you must uncover the bodies during the eleventh inFamous Paper Trail mission.

12.1 Starting point for the twelfth inFamous Paper Trail mission.

12.2 Area where you find Tyler Bennet in the twelfth inFamous Paper Trail mission.

13 Starting point for the thirteenth inFamous Paper Trail mission.

14.1 Starting point for the fourteenth inFamous Paper Trail mission.

14.2 Area where you begin following the van during the fourteenth inFamous Paper Trail mission.

14.3 Location where you must defeat enemy agents while completing the fourteenth inFamous Paper Trail mission.

15.1 Starting point for the fifteenth inFamous Paper Trail mission.

15.2 Areas where you find the remaining vans during the fifteenth inFamous Paper Trail mission.

16.1 Starting point for the sixteenth inFamous Paper Trail mission.

16.2 Area where you find the origami dove while completing the sixteenth inFamous Paper Trail mission.

17.2 Area where you must take the first picture during the seventeenth inFamous Paper Trail mission.

17.3 Area where you must take the second picture during the seventeenth inFamous Paper Trail mission.

17.4 Area where you must take the third picture during the seventeenth inFamous Paper Trail mission.

17.5 Area where you must take the fourth picture during the seventeenth inFamous Paper Trail mission.

17.6 Area where you must take the fifth picture during the seventeenth inFamous Paper Trail mission.

18.2, 19.1 Celia’s apartment that needs to be located while completing the eighteenth inFamous Paper Trail mission. This is also the starting point for the nineteenth inFamous Paper Trail mission.

The above map shows the entire city and provides information on all the important locations visited during subsequent missions of inFamous Paper Trail. It is noteworthy that the game allows you to return to where data is transferred from in such cases as e. g. when evidence transfer gets interrupted or when you fail to create a new profile in time on inFamous Paper Trail website. Starting points of side quests are marked on the in-game map with yellow.

inFAMOUS: Second Son / YMMV

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ymmv/infamoussecondson

Following

Go To

• Acceptable Targets:
  • The US government, already not very well portrayed in the first game by having bombastic, outright propaganda lie to the rest of the world about the state of the city — eventually bombing its own citizens — graduates into full-on villain in Second Son, doing things like trying to monitor all superheroes. If that wasn’t blatant enough, Benjamin Franklin’s oft-quoted comment on security and privacy is the game’s main quote.
  • Drug dealers are the only non-D.U.P. affiliated characters that Delsin can attack with no repercussions. Attacking the racist Akurans, anti-Conduit activists, street performers, and sign twirlers earns evil karma, but more than just going on a killing spree attacking anyone.
• Accidental Innuendo:
  • Toward the beginning of the game, when experimenting with his powers, Delsin says «I am going to touch everything.»
  • Reggie’s comment «Yeah well, there’s good touching… and bad touching.»
  • His comments when caught by the Angels might count as this.
• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • Evil Karma Delsin: A Sociopathic Hero with anger issues? A Well-Intentioned Extremist who’s similar to Augustine, just without the discipline? A Magneto-esque «Humans and Conduits cannot coexist» revolutionary? A petulant delinquent too immature to use his powers responsibly? A straight-up Villain Protagonist who accurately matches the term «Bio-Terrorist»? And was his Orbital Drop on the Akomish in the bad karma ending a Mercy Kill or him acting out of a mix of rage and sorrow.
  • Brooke Augustine. Is she really an Anti-Villain Well-Intentioned Extremist like she says, or is she just a sadistic, sociopathic bully who’ll do anything to stay in power? Was the memory sequence that Delsin absorbed the truth, a deliberate portrayal of herself in a more positive light, or seven years worth of Believing Their Own Lies?
  • Eugene Sims: A well-meaning, slightly dreamy kid with self-esteem issues who genuinely wants to help people but can’t figure out how on his own, or a power-mad, compulsively lying narcissist whose video game obsession has made him completely disconnected from reality trying to force innocents into his private «dominion» to feed his complexes?
  • Due to Reggie saying the same exact thing to Delsin during his death scene in both the Good Karma and Bad Karma paths, fans have been wondering just how far the Undying Loyalty between the brothers go and how far past the Moral Event Horizon Reggie would have been potentially willing to go for his younger brother had he not died and survived for a potential sequel.
    • This also brings up the interpretation that Reggie was in denial and managed to trick himself into thinking evil Delsin was a good person despite all the horrible deeds he undoubtedly saw his brother commit.
    • Another interpretation could be that Reggie thought that getting the approval and validation of his older brother would stop Delsin from careening further down the abyss.
    • Reggie opinion of Conduits in general is up for debate. He starts off bigoted, but does he grow to accept Conduits or is he humoring Delsin to bring him back home? And why is he so concerned with Delsin being a Conduit, and ecstatic whenever there’s a possibly Delsin might lose his powers? Is he concerned for his brother’s wellbeing, or does he not like Delsin being different or does he not like Delsin having power over him?
  • Comes up when you fight Augstine. If you are going Good Karma, taking her down counts as a Good act as it’s Unseating a Tyrant. If you are Evil, it Evil Karma as it’s just Bucking the Establishment.
• Ass Pull: The revelation that the RFI detonation in Infamous 2 did not kill all Conduits. Considering the ending of Infamous 2 showed that even unactivated conduits as far from New Marais as East Africa and Asia were killed, it’s strange to see that conduits are still common in the United States.
• Base-Breaking Character: Delsin. Players either find him to be a fun character with entertaining lines, or an obnoxious punk who tries too hard to be Totally Radical and lacking character development.
• Broken Base: Over whether there should be another Infamous game, as 2 tied up all of the plot lines from the first two games. There was also debate over Delsin, but many people liked Good Karma Delsin.
• Contested Sequel: Portions of the inFamous fanbase disregard the game as canon, due to a protagonist that lacked chapter development, a shallow story, a cheap retcon of the consequences of 2’s Good Karma ending and the acceptance of the Evil Karma endings by some other fans. Others liked it for its gameplay and felt Delsin (at least on the good Karma path) and Reggie were likable characters.
• Continuity Lockout: Averted much like inFAMOUS 2, only to a larger extent. This title is more of a Spin-Off than a true sequel to inFAMOUS 2, it takes place seven years later and features a new protagonist in a new city with a new supporting cast, so not much knowledge of the first two games is required to get through Second Son, and most of what is required to know is explained in the game itself.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Mounted auto-turrets — they fire fast and have impeccable aim, and whilst they have limited range since they can’t turn to face a different direction, they’re usually found at D.U.P. waypoints & have a squad of troopers as back-up. Thankfully, Neon’s Super Speed can out run their guns & they can’t detect Delsin if he uses the Video’s Invisibility, and defeating them simply requires getting behind them.
  • The D.U.P. Trucks driving around Seattle. If Delsin is just walking down the road, they’ll ignore him; however if he does so much as climb a wall, the truck will stop & the squad inside will exit & open fire as the truck’s siren rings out — and after a while, the D.U.P. starts mounting turrets on top of the trucks too & gradually goes from just standard D.U.P. Troopers to the including the more powerful enemies, which make it more likely that a second truck will turn up as you try & take out the stronger enemies.
  • Almost as a Shout-Out to this trope, you actually deal with Demonic Spiders in the Battle Arena Level 3 in First Light. Becomes Fridge Brilliance when you realize the one creating them is a gamer.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Reggie gets a lot of love for his level-headedness, his relationship with Delsin, and his occasional Funny Moments. So much so that he is subjected to many He’s Just Hiding theories and many fans wouldn’t forgive Hank for triggering his death.
• God Damned Bats: The usual D.U.P. Soldier can become this if they repeatedly keep jumping from an area to another. Even worse in Extreme, where most of the time, the enemy will not be marked, so you might end up losing sight of a jumping D.U.P. Soldier until they start shooting you, again.
• He’s Just Hiding: A lot of fans refuse to believe that Reggie is really dead, since both Hank and Delsin survived being encased in concrete by Augustine. However, there are two flaws in this theory. First, Reggie isn’t a Conduit and second, his concrete-encased body fell into a river, so it’s likely that he either drowned (assuming that either his face remained uncovered or there were holes in the concrete that allowed water to enter) or eventually suffocated in the concrete (assuming he was fully encased).
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Released in 2014, the game takes place in an X-Menesque world where superpowered Conduits experience Fantastic Racism and are locked up in a prison called Curdun Cay without trial justifying that it’s a way to ensure the safety of «normal» humans. Fast forward 2018 with the emergence of ICE and their controversial handling of illegal immigrants the parallels are strangely similar.
  • In the mission «Go Fetch», you are tasked with dealing with anti-conduit protesters. Should you choose to go the evil route and kill them all, Delsin will remark that he did it in self-defense, with the protesters coming after him with… signs and pamphlets. This became an especially sore point in 2016 and 2020, with the rise of anti-police Black Lives Matter protests taking place across the United States, including in no small part, Seattle.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Troy Baker & Travis Willingham previously played Batman & Superman in the Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes, and Hawkeye & Thor in Avengers Assemble. Here, they’ve switched positions of Badass Normal & Superpowered Badass. This also applies to Laura Bailey, who plays Black Widow in Avengers Assemble, but is a Conduit in Second Son.
  • In dialog with Eugene, Delsin hopes the backup the young conduit provides him won’t be «Melvin and Lennie from your D&D group.» Eugene replies, seeming offended, «I don’t have a D&D group,» as if that level of nerdiness is beneath even him. The year after this game came out, Travis Willingham and Laura Bailey, voices of Reggie and Fetch respectively, began appearing on Critical Role, a weekly webcast series with other notable voice actors. Have a guess which tabletop RPG is the centerpiece of the show?
• Jerkass Woobie: All conduits in the game besides Good Karma Delsin can count this, having sad backstories (Besides probably Hank) and good intentions but have done bad things.
  • Henry Daughtry aka Hank. He was horribly treated in the Conduit prison and later in the story, his daughter was being held captive by Augustine which made him have no choice but listen to her commands. However, he is an ex-convict who broke out of many prisons and used his smoke powers to steal more easily, though he could’ve been stealing money to give to his daughter, so she could live without him. He’s also one of the reasons Reggie ended up dying, but then again, he was told that Augustine had never killed anyone, before.
  • Fetch Walker. When she got her powers was almost immediately turned in to the D.U.P. by her parents, causing her and her brother, Brent to run away. After she hooked up to drugs along with her brother, she ended up killing him during a drug-fueled panic attack. After she escaped, she used her power to kill drug dealers as her form of revenge for her brother’s death.
  • Eugene Sims. He was bullied in high school and when his powers were discovered after getting pushed too far, he was taken by the D.U.P. where he was forced to summon his demons and angels before they could help him. After escaping, he used his power to kidnap people wearing the yellow D.U.P restraining vests, albeit to help them. It also doesn’t help that his own mother passed the bill that got the D.U.P. its funding.
  • Brooke Augustine used to be a soldier for the army. However, during a battle against a giant Conduit Threat, (presumably the Beast) her Conduit powers appeared. Along with a small girl named Celia, Augustine wandered the streets, nowhere to go and had seen Conduits being killed by humans. When the army arrived, she believe they were going to help her and Celia. But instead, the army was targeting them. Augustine ended up sacrificing Celia to the army, trapping her in concrete, so she could convince the army to create the D.U.P., so she could protect innocent people from Conduits when truthfully, she was trying to take them to Curdan Cay, so no one could harm them. Her sadistic behaviour, specifically when attacking the Akomish and Delsin at the beginning, especially when you’re doing the Good Karma route, sacrificing Celia to the army as stated earlier, her belief of humans and Conduits being unable to co-exist and causing the death of Reggie is what definitely makes her this.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Evil karma Delsin crosses it when he kills Hank who’s a few feet away from his long-separated daughter and just wanting to go live his life. Even if he was responsible for Reggie’s death, it’s a very cruel thing to do. If not that, the other potential MEH crosser is Delsin killing the rest of the Akomish after they disown him.
  • Augustine killing Reggie. She’s fully capable of simply immobilizing a person, and could’ve spared him by removing the concrete. Instead, it’s shown steadily covering Reggie’s body, meaning she actively intended to kill him, which takes when he lets go of Delsin to keep it from spreading onto his body too. The death he would’ve earned could only have been an awful one.
  • Shane from First Light ultimately crosses the MEH when he betrays Fetch by kidnapping Brent & holding him hostage so that Fetch will become his enforcer & allow him to become the Kingpin of Seattle. From that point on, he just slides further & further into outright villainy, culminating in Brent’s death.
  • The extremists of the «Purity First» initiative in Paper Trail, the ringleader and his goons kill around fifteen suspected conduits and post it up on their forums as a «hilarious video», gloating about it all the while like hunters bagging a game animal. Fittingly, when the ringleader is confronted he realizes that a Delsin/Player of either karma level would knock the everliving crap out of him or just straight up kill him, so he jumps into the bay and kills himself.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • The sound made when you absorb power from Core Relays and Blast Shards from Tracker Drones.
  • The sound made when absorbing items that refill your power and health is another great sound to listen to.
• Narm:
  • Reggie’s death on the Infamous path — his last words are the same as the Hero path, that he’s so proud of the man Delsin has become… Which really doesn’t make sense when Delsin is happily running around killing anyone who slightly annoys him.
  • Unfortunately there tends to be a lot of Gameplay and Story Segregation when it comes to Infamous path. When recruiting Fetch, Delsin threatens Reggie with physical violence if the latter tries to follow through with arresting her, and the following scene immediately makes light on the situation and Reggie’s follow-up phone call gets Played for Laughs with «pouty Reggie» and Reggie never mentioning that his brother threatened him.
• One-Scene Wonder: Zeke makes an appearance via phone call late on in the «Cole’s Legacy» missions.
• Play the Game, Skip the Story: How some feel about this game.
• Replacement Scrappy: Delsin to some people, especially since The Stinger in the previous game implied that Cole might have survived or was revived.
• The Scrappy:
  • Evil karma Delsin, compared to good karma Delsin. He basically commits mass murder For the Lulz, Reggie barely calls him out on it, and for some reason, he starts looking like he’s got a bad cold going on and hasn’t been sleeping well.
  • Hank. If several Reddit threads mean anything, even the most devoted good karma players at least thought about killing him for selling Delsin out to Augustine, who then kills Reggie.
• Scrappy Mechanic: The manner in which you unlock the Paper Trail missions. Having to visit an external website just to unlock the next mission seems needless at times.
  • Using the touch pad to hold up the core relay and then slamming R2 to destroy it. It feels awkward to use and the finger that uses the touch pad has to be held down; one slip and Delsin drops it.
  • Whenever there’s 2 missions, one for each karma, you cannot choose the mission opposite to your karma. In short, Evil Delsin can’t start good missions and vice versa, basically forcing a strictly good/evil playthrough. Especially painful in the final mission, where you need to choose to kill or spare Augustine; a good Delsin can’t be made to kill Augustine, no matter how much the player might loathe her. Overall, the game gives less freedom of choice than the previous games and switching Karma halfway can create plot holes ^note Start off as good, and switch to evil before the Space Needle mission; Betty will complain about Delsin ending an earlier call early, something he didn’t do., making one wonder if it was rushed.
• Spiritual Adaptation:
  • To the X-Men. Whilst the similarities between Conduits and Mutants have always been there, Second Son takes it even further by dropping the need for a device like the Ray Sphere to activate Conduit powers & introducing an oppressive government agency claiming Mutants/Conduits are menaces who should be locked away from society.
  • Also to Darker than Black, since Contractors frequently make use of Heart Is an Awesome Power similar to the Conduits’ powersets in this game and the plot also deals with empowered individuals in the employ of an organization which hates them.
• That One Level: The Paper Trail missions. Each mission, except for the first, is unlocked by logging onto an external website, where the player is required to navigate through a series of complicated clues, without many hints as to what you’re looking for. And on top of that, sometimes the vital clue you need to input to progress will refuse to work.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • When you really get right down to it, Hank was really just a plot device for Delsin to get his powers and trigger his Despair Event Horizon. After the player chooses to spare him, he just disappears from the remainder of the story. It would have been interesting to see him partake in the final battle to atone for his crimes in the Good Karma path.
  • Augustine herself ends up following into this as she spends the majority of the game completely off-screen, so the only impression the player really gets of her is that she is a Hunter of Their Own Kind who wound up getting Drunk On Power. But then, during the eleventh hour, the game tries to surmise that she may have been a Well-Intentioned Extremist all along, an interpretation that inFAMOUS: First Light ends up leaning into, but by this point, it was during the final boss fight, so whatever nuance this twist could have offered got undermined by the fact that it was introduced far too late into the plot.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Second Son being the kind of game it is, at least one case of this was probably on purpose. It’s easy to wonder why the game goes for such a black and white good vs. evil karma and story system when the matters unfolding in it are so relatable to real life. Then you realize that it’s exactly because of that that it probably wasn’t a good idea to, say, portray a frustrated rebel against an unjust system using violent methods as the «Evil» route. The X-Men say hello again.
  • Some people believe the biggest detriment to the story was that it follows the Good Ending to inFAMOUS 2. If it followed the Evil Ending, not only would the revival of the Conduits be seen as less of an Ass Pull, but Beast Cole could be the game’s final boss. Appeal to the majority won out though, since less than 30% of players ever even saw that ending.
  • The overall narrative of the game only loosely connects to its Evil Path portion. While Fetch and Eugene clearly go through Darker and Edgier Character Development, (and Augustine makes snide comments before the Final Boss) Reggie, Betty, and even Seattle at-large barely bother reacting to shifts in Karma or Karmic Actions. No TV Reports. No calls from major characters congratulating or expressing concern for your mental state. You’d think Reggie would respond more poorly to being physically threatened by Delsin or Fetch/Eugene responding to a shift in positive Karma. Much of the game’s outerlying narrative seems designed primarily for a Good Path playthrough, making an Evil run rather weightless until the Downer Ending.
• Underused Game Mechanic: Despite being the main driving point of the game’s story, the concrete powerset is underused in-game. Delsin only gets it during the Final Boss, and due to a lack of a New Game Plus feature, it can only be used for optional side missions in the post game. Unlike smoke, neon or video, concrete lacks a karma bomb, making it even less likely to be used by comparison.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Take a guess. Hank Daughtry would be a lot less tempting to kill if he didn’t spend his every onscreen moment being as unlikeable as humanly possible. To wit, his first act is to reward Delsin helping him by taking him hostage, and it just goes downhill from there^note In the next thirty seconds, he tries to kill Reggie by flipping a car onto him. He sets a fish guttery on fire, throwing the Akomish into danger and getting them tortured near to death by Augustine just to lose her. He pops back up late in the game. Delsin tries to get his help, only for Hank to run without listening to a word said to him. Then he knocks Delsin out, and, over audio feed, accuses Delsin of being the hysterical one who’s acting irrational, and then threaten to hang up if Delsin doesn’t shut up and listen. He leads poor gullible Delsin into an obvious trap, stabs him in the back, and hands him over to Augustine, who then murders Reggie. His excuse is that Augustine said she wouldn’t kill them. Considering he admits in the same breath that she’s got a sadistic streak a mile wide, and she kicks off the game by leaving the Akomish for dead, either he’s trying to ease his own conscience or he’s legitimately that oblivious. When he tries to run back to the DUP for protection, they break their deal since Augustine’s not around. It’s hard to feel bad for him, especially when the DUP themselves point out he betrayed his own kind taking the deal at all.. Even his daughter, who the game dangles in front of you to push you against killing him, won’t do that job well once a player considers that Hank didn’t love her enough to quit his life of crime before he broke out of his eleventh prison.
  • Given his Base-Breaking Character status, Delsin also falls into this territory to his detractors. His initial reason for wanting to go to Seattle is to syphon Augustine’s powers so that he can heal his tribe but by the time he gets there he almost completely forgets about this and is more obsessed with getting new powers for his own enjoyment and simply wants to fight Augustine. He only ever brings up his original motive whenever Reggie tries to rein him in and talk him into returning home. This hits its peak after his powers seemingly completely short-circuit and Delsin is exclusively upset at the idea of no longer having powers rather than not be able to save the tribe. This all makes all his talk about the Conduits being oppressed come off as rather superficial since it comes off like he really just want to have super powers consequence free.
• Values Dissonance: Even at the time of the game’s release, the Drugs Are Bad message was a bit iffy with plenty of people starting to believe that it was more of a health issue than a crime issue. Seattle, in particular, would be one of the first cities in America to decriminalize marijuana. In the game, drug dealers are considered Asshole Victim Always Chaotic Evil thugs. So much so that they’re the only other major enemy in the game with Delsin dismissing their deaths at the hands of Fetch.
• What Do You Mean, It’s Not Political?:
  • The white boss of a government agency walks into the collective home of a Native American community and needlessly brutalizes them when they do not give her what she wants with no foreseeable consequences. When one of the members tries to retaliate, the government proceeds to paint him as a criminal beyond redemption that started the conflict.
  • The main setting takes place in Seattle, which is known for being one of the most progressive cities out there in America. As a result, it is not surprising to see several people (especially liberals) there protesting for social reforms (Just like Black Lives Matter protests back in 2016 and 2020) like what Delsin are doing in the game if he’s on the good path: Striving for equality.
  • The mass internment of individuals by a Homeland Security-esque agency in cages with the justification being that some of them are criminals.
  • Just the fact that the U.S. Government relabels a group of people as «terrorists» as an excuse to ignore any sense of human decency and arrest, detain or just outright kill them with no due-process.
• The Woobie: Good Karma Delsin becomes this at the end. Although managing to put a stop to the D.U.P., his brother Reggie ended up dying trying to protect him from Augustine. Evil Karma Delsin is more of a Jerkass Woobie, since he murders Augustine out of revenge for killing Reggie and kills the Akomish with a Orbital Drop for banishing him.

---

A small owner of a big newspaper The son of a Tuvan senator presented an updated France Soir: Internet and mass media: Lenta.ru

Just yesterday, the French daily newspaper France Soir came out with a modest circulation of 22,000 copies. Tonight, 500,000 copies will be thrown onto the shelves. The 20-fold increase in circulation in just one day is part of the new owner’s ambitious and aggressive campaign to make the once popular paper a readable publication again.

The new owner of France Soir is 25-year-old Alexander Pugachev, son of Russian billionaire, senator from Tuva Sergei Pugachev, an «Orthodox oligarch» as the French press sometimes calls him, for his personal friendship with the late patriarch. Pugachev Jr., by the way, a French citizen, headed France Soir a little over a year ago — having done what Arkady Gaydamak failed to do in 2006.

The Arbitration Court of the city of Lille, which for a long time dealt with the issue of changing the ownership of the unprofitable France Soir, refused Gaydamak — although he promised multimillion-dollar investments and promised to make the newspaper readable, while completely retaining the staff and not interfering in editorial policy. But the young Pugachev managed to convince the judges of the seriousness of his intentions and, apparently, to provide sufficient guarantees for the court.

One way or another, in April 2009, Alexander Pugachev became the legal owner of 85 percent of the shares of France Soir. Virtually no information about the purchase was made public — the amount and financial sources of the transaction remained unnamed. Even the guarantor bank is only known to be a «reputable French bank».

Of course, the French newspapers assumed that the purchase was financed by the father of a young businessman — the state of Pugachev Sr. for 2009 was estimated by Forbes magazine at $ 500 million, calling him the 78th richest entrepreneur in Russia. The Luxadvor investment fund owned by Sergei Pugachev, however, formally indicated that it had nothing to do with Pugachev Jr.’s money.

However, the potential involvement of the Russian oligarch in the deal only reassured the France Soir team. Immediately after the purchase, Deputy Editor-in-Chief Charles Desjardins commented on the new owner: «He has significant funds, which are backed up by his father’s reputation. The obvious lack of experience is compensated by the knowledge of his father, who showed interest in the newspaper.»

25 years old. The youngest son of politician and businessman Sergei Pugachev. Lived in France, studied in the USA and Monaco. Knows several foreign languages, including French and Italian. Married, father of two children. Professionally fond of car racing.

As for the French public, they reacted to the deal with complete indifference. France Soir, once sold in the millions, was by then in a protracted crisis. And although the newspapers discussed (rather sluggishly, by the way) whether the Kremlin’s machinations were hiding behind the change of ownership, the main question was why the Russians needed to invest in this obviously hopeless project.

France Soir — a newspaper with history. It was founded in 1944 and was associated with the French Resistance movement (first name — «Defence de la France», «Defense of France»). By the mid-1950s, with a circulation of one and a half million copies, France Soir was one of the most widely read publications in Europe.

But over the next 50 years, the popularity of France Soir has steadily declined, and in 2005 the newspaper, whose circulation was reduced by that time to 50,000 copies, went bankrupt. France Soir’s last surge in popularity came in February 2006, when the newspaper reprinted the infamous Danish series of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.

At that time, the epic had already begun with the change of ownership and possible subsequent restructuring. There were two main proposals — the already mentioned project of Arkady Gaydamak and the plan of Jean-Pierre Brunoy. Brunois, who is connected with the real estate business, proposed firing half of the employees and increasing the readership by turning the newspaper into a tabloid: depriving the publication of the headings «politics» and «culture» and focusing on gossip columns.

The staff of the newspaper supported Gaydamak’s proposal — not only because he promised to do without large-scale cuts, but also because, turning into a tabloid, France Soir would lose the only stable source of funding at that time — an annual state subsidy of 2 million euros, the right to which only socio-political publications have.

The Court of Lille, however, decided in favor of Brunois. The newspaper did change its focus, but there was no quick way out of the crisis — the employees went on strike, which was supported by the union, accusing the court of making «the worst possible decision.» For some time the newspaper was not published, and in April 2006 a special issue was printed under the title «Resistance», in which the editors actually demanded that the newspaper be given to Gaydamak.

On March 5, 2010, Russian businessman Alexander Lebedev became the owner of the British newspaper The Independent and its Sunday supplement The Independent on Sunday. The acquisition of the publication cost Lebedev a nominal amount of one pound sterling — in recent years, The Independent has suffered millions of losses, and the circulation has fallen to 186 thousand (at the turn of the 80s — 90’s newspaper was published with a circulation of 400,000 copies).

The Independent’s restructuring plan calls for millions of dollars in investment and a reduction in the newspaper’s retail value, but it is unlikely that Lebedev will make The Independent free, like his other English newspaper, The London Evening Standard, which he owns.

By the end of 2008, when Alexander Pugachev became interested in the publication, its circulation was reduced to 22,000 copies. Jean-Pierre Brunoy, according to rare reports in the press, was relieved to sell 85 percent of the troubled asset to an unknown but energetic Russian, and kept a nominal 15 percent for himself at that ratio.

Not much is known about Alexander Pugachev even now, but a year ago, especially in France, even less was known about him. They knew that he had studied in the USA, they knew that he had just received French citizenship (which allowed him to obtain permission to buy France Soir), they knew that he lived in an estate near Nice, but where did he get the money for this estate — not knew.

The Pugachev family’s foreign business has traditionally been focused on real estate — in the mid-90s, Sergei Pugachev actively bought up estates, villas and castles on the Cote d’Azur of France. Pugachev Jr. began his business career with the construction of luxury housing in Moscow.

The new Frenchman’s business plan was to invest 10 million euros in the newspaper, increase its circulation to 100,000, start selling France Soir at supermarket checkouts, and by September 2009, bring the newspaper to self-sufficiency.

Obviously, along the way, this plan has undergone major changes. Now we are talking about the fact that the newspaper will be published with a circulation of 150-200 thousand copies, and the update is accompanied by an advertising campaign, which AFP sources estimated at 20 million euros. In parallel, the design of the newspaper and the website www.francesoir.fr was redesigned, the staff almost doubled, and the price per room was reduced from one euro to 50 cents (France Soir is going to sell for 70 cents in the future). From the 17th arrondissement of Paris, France Soir moved to a spacious office with a resounding address 100 Champs Elysees.

Pugachev maintains that the newspaper will not change its direction: France Soir will remain a 40-page tabloid covering sports and social life, plus a four-page tab with a TV program and recipes. The key to success, according to the new owner, lies in exclusive photographs, large and colorful, which he promises to get «at any cost.»

When exactly Alexander Pugachev hopes to make France Soir profitable, he did not say, but made it clear that his ultimate goal lies in the commercial success of the enterprise. «I don’t do charity work,» AFP quoted the 25-year-old businessman as saying.

Eastern Review, newspaper | IRCIPEDIA

In his «Diary» the Siberian journalist-publicist and historian V. I. Vagin in his entry dated December 20, 1881. notes that “Yadrintsev wants to publish Vostochnoye Obozreniye,” a newspaper devoted entirely to the interests of Siberia and the East. The archaeologist, ethnographer, researcher of Siberia and publicist Nikolai Mikhailovich Yadrintsev moved to St. Petersburg in 1881, where he immediately set about implementing his idea. And so, on April 1, 1882, without prior censorship in St. Petersburg, the first issue of the weekly newspaper Vostochnoye Obozreniye was published under his editorship.

In Irkutsk, on May 20, the first twenty issues of NM Yadrintsev’s newspaper were received through the editorial office of the Sibir newspaper to familiarize Irkutsk residents with the new Siberian press organ. The newspaper published telegrams from the Russian Telegraph Agency, leading articles on socio-political topics, reviews of the social life of Siberia and European Russia, correspondence from different places in Siberia, reviews and articles on the study of the Siberian Territory, reviews of theater performances and concerts, literary reviews, essays , feuilletons, stories, stories, poetic works.

The newspaper reflected, especially after its transfer to Irkutsk, various political views. Regionalists, liberals, socialist-revolutionaries, Mensheviks, Bolsheviks, and others participated in the newspaper. And this independence of presentation of views, sometimes contradictory, was the reason for the first warning issued at the end of October 1882 by the Minister of the Interior on the proposal of the Main Directorate for Affairs print.

The Vostochnoye Obozreniye newspaper was accused that it «with its tendentiousness and incessant attacks on the Siberian administration seeks to discredit it in the eyes of the local population.» But articles criticizing the actions of the Siberian administration continued to appear in the newspaper. And the second warning was not long in coming. On June 10, 1884, the newspaper was once again warned that «despite the first warning, it began to report false news about the actions and orders of the Siberian authorities with the obvious goal of weakening the authority of the administration among the population and arousing distrust in its activities.» After the third warning, 19September 1885, followed, firstly, by the suspension of the publication of the newspaper for two weeks, and, secondly, preliminary censorship was introduced for the newspaper.

June 27, 1885 in the 26th issue of the newspaper «Vostochnoye Obozreniye» a notice was published:

«It was published and sent to subscribers of the Vostochnoye Obozreniye» free of charge «Literary Collection» — a collection of scientific and literary articles about Siberia and the Asian East «.

The following year, the supplement to the newspaper «Vostochnoye obozreniye» «Literary collection» is turned into a scientific and literary periodical independent publication called «Siberian collection».

In May 1886 the first book of the Siberian Collection was published. The program of this collection consisted of six items: 1) Fiction; 2) Scientific publications on natural science, ethnography, anthropology, history, archeology, statistics; 3) Epics, songs, fairy tales, as well as legends and works of folk art of the indigenous peoples of Siberia; 4) Translations of travels and essays relating to Asia, the Russian East, Turkestan and Siberia; 5) Criticism and bibliography of Russian and foreign works; 6) News of literature and science.

The second book of the Siberian Collection was published in August 1886, and the third in April 1887. In the same year, 1887, two more books of the Collection were published in St. Petersburg.

In 1888, NM Yadrintsev transferred the publication of the newspaper Vostochnoye Obozreniye to Irkutsk. In the leading article of the first one, issued on January 7, 1888 in Irkutsk, the number read:

“The newspaper began to appear in Irkutsk due to local living conditions and in the interests of the public. Irkutsk was chosen as the residence of the editorial board, because the pulse of public life always beats more vividly in it, because the society itself is more sensitive to public issues here. The mental life of Eastern Siberia made itself felt and manifested itself from the time of Speransky. Vodka Siberia responded to all the vital and vital questions of the region with a wonderful flair. Recently, an initiative has also been coming from Eastern Siberia on the main issues of the region, striving to meet its urgent needs. The peasant business, the railroad through Siberia, the land question, the exiled, foreign and others are in the foreground and are waiting for their solution. In Eastern Siberia, the intelligentsia is now significantly grouped, the oldest Department of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society has been working for many years, and its tasks are so diverse that it will have enough work for a long time.

At first, the newspaper Vostochnoye Obozreniye was published in Irkutsk at a loss. Even N. M. Yadrintsev was already thinking of moving the publication of the newspaper back to St. Petersburg. But in response to N. M. Yadrintsev’s appeal on this matter, the Main Directorate for Press Affairs entrusted the local administration with the task of resolving the issue. The latter, in turn, decided that it would be better if such an «inconvenient» newspaper were located nearby, that is, in Irkutsk. The newspaper’s financial performance continued to deteriorate. From 14 October 1890, telegrams from the Northern Telegraph Agency with announcements were no longer delivered to subscribers. And with the fortieth issue, published in January 1890, the newspaper «Eastern Review» ceased to appear.

Its publication was resumed only on January 1, 1891. The situation of the newspaper began to improve to some extent. From November 3, 1893, that is, starting from the forty-fifth issue, the newspaper began to appear three times a week (on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays).

On March 19, 1895, the well-known Russian prose writer Ivan Ivanovich Popov became the editor and improved the work of the Vostochnoye Obozreniye newspaper. And already from the second half of 1898, the newspaper «Eastern Review» becomes a daily.

In 1900, in Russia, as well as in Europe, the 500th anniversary of Gutenberg, the first printer in the world, was widely celebrated. On June 11, the following telegram was sent to St. Petersburg addressed to the secretary of the Russian Society of Printing Workers:

“The editorial staff, staff, typesetters, printers and all employees of the Vostochnoye Obozreniye newspaper from a distant outskirts send greetings to those gathered in memory of the great Gutenberg, expressing warm wishes so that his glorious invention would spread the ideas of truth, brotherhood and light, and lead us to the ideal of the future. Editor I. I. Popov.

In Irkutsk, on that day, employees of the printing house, editorial office and employees of the Vostochnoye Obozreniye newspaper celebrated the great day of the 500th anniversary of the invention of Johannes Gutenberg outside the city.

On January 24, 1906, the last, nineteenth, issue of the Vostochnoye Obozreniye newspaper published for a quarter of a century was published. The newspaper, according to the order of the head of the notorious punitive detachment, General Alexander Nikolaevich Miller-Zakomelsky, was closed by a decree of the Governor-General K. M. Alekseev dated January 22 for «a direction harmful to public peace.» Instead of the newspaper «Eastern Review» from February 4, 1906, a new newspaper, Siberian Review, was published under the editorship of Pavel Yakovlevich Man. But this newspaper, for the same reason, was closed on June 18, 1906 by order of the authorities, and the editor P. Ya. Man had to flee from Irkutsk to Kyakhta. A total of 111 issues of the Siberian Review newspaper were published.

After the Siberian Review, the publisher-editor Nikolai Nikolaevich Solovyov published on June 20, 1906 only one issue of the newspaper Molodayaya Sibir, which was closed due to martial law.