Transdniestrian Tales

If, like me, you receive a weekly email digest from The Tiraspol Times, you will very much enjoy this series of dispatches from The Economist's expert correspondent in Moldova and Transdniestria:

FINDING the offices of the only English-language paper in a foreign city is hardly a tough assignment—except when the paper is the Tiraspol Times, the slickly produced propaganda outlet of the Transdniestrian authorities. This purports to be a proper newspaper, with a website and a print edition. The editor until recently was one Mark Street, assisted by Jason Cooper (bald) and Karen Ryan (blonde). The news, features and analysis are better than anything Moldova produces in English.

Yet this fine organ is remarkably elusive. Its website shows no address, but the domain registration gives 118 October 25th St. That is shared by the infamous Hotel Druzhba and a political party. Nobody at either building has heard of the Tiraspol Times. Local journalists cannot recall meeting anyone from the paper. Even a person such as Dmitri Soin, who has featured in its columns, says he has had contact “only by e-mail”.

The internet reveals no trace in any previous life of the journalists who supposedly work there. The only discoverable person seems to be its publisher, Mr Des Grant, an Irish local-newspaper owner with an unexplained but lively connection with Transdniestria...

It's all good stuff.