However, three ubiquitous economic factors that have a great impact on newspaper management in the CIS should be considered. In many countries in the region, particularly in provincial areas, cash is at a premium. Businesses are cash poor. Barter deals for advertising space are common. Sometimes this is achieved through complex deals in which products bartered with an advertiser are given to a third party in exchange for other goods which can be used by the paper, or sold.
Some newspapers use bartered goods to pay their staff in kind.
Others even start their own shops to sell bartered products. But the extensive use of barter deals in the region causes management problems because it results in cash poor newspapers. Even worse is an extension of the barter system in which bills are settled not even in the form of goods, but using promissory notes promising goods in the future. In some regions they have become a form of currency. An editor in southern Russia with whom I worked recently said that if he refused to accept such notes he would go bankrupt.