The Fourth Sector was created in 2017 by three journalists from Perm — Anastasia Sechina, Vladimir Sokolov and Mikhail Danilovich. We worked together at the radio station "Echo of Perm", then in the online magazine "Zvezda (Star)". Then together we held a school for investigative journalists "Access Point" and together we decided that we wanted to do journalism according to our own rules.
In September 2017, we registered a non-profit organization, in December — the media. Until 2020, they worked as an independent freelance team. We created media projects (for example), wrote texts in complex genres (for example), published in local and federal media (for example). Then we increased the group to thirteen people, creating an Artel of freelance journalists. We were joined by journalists from Vologda, Kirov, Perm, Veliky Novgorod, Rostov-on-Don, Petrozavodsk.
However, in August 2021, the Fourth Sector NGO was
recognized as a foreign agent. We have decided to liquidate the formal "avatars" (NGOs and the media) and suspended the work of the Artel. After the start of the war in Ukraine in February 2022, it finally collapsed due to a combination of reasons — increased risks, internal conflicts, more complicated processes, and emotional burnout. Someone left the country, someone left the profession, someone launched their own autonomous project. In particular, the idea of a freelance artel and "editorial without editorial" has been transformed into the
New Tab media.
But the
Gribnitsa remained — a collection of useful tools for media people. In May 2022, the
GLUSH media search service was born. Also,
our experience in creating joint and interregional projects has not gone anywhere. All these ideas came together like a puzzle, and we decided to keep the Fourth Sector initiative as the operator of these projects — and all others that will appear in the future.
The name "The Fourth Sector" combines two phrases — "fourth power" (media) and "third sector" (non-profit sphere).
Today it is a non-commercial initiative focused primarily on regional media professionals.