After being released in August 2024 as part of a prisoner swap, Evan Gershkovich came to Berlin, where he wrote his memoir, This Cursed Beautiful Land. We met up to talk books.
When Evan Gershkovich was abducted into Russian prison while reporting in Yekaterinburg in 2023, it was a clear signal that Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine had changed something fundamentally in the media environment. Almost immediately, newsrooms pulled their reporters out of Russia – and Gershkovich himself became a pawn in a prisoner exchange.
HEIST is a worker-owned online magazine, founded by writers and editors who after years working across Berlin's media landscape believed something essential was missing.
Anyone living here has felt a growing gap between the city as it actually is and the version being served up by mainstream outlets. We experienced that disconnect firsthand. We saw political censorship shape coverage decisions and felt the weight of billionaire ownership land directly on our work. It reached a point where we could either keep going along with it, or try to build something better.
That's why we created HEIST.
And look at you: scrolling, clicking, squinting at blurred text just to get a little further. If you'll go to that much effort to read HEIST, you can surely give us one email. That's the whole price, and the rest of the story is right behind it.
Real journalism costs money. We commission the hard-hitting, well-reported, long-form work everyone wants to read but nobody seems to publish anymore.
The future of this city is still in the balance. We intend to be part of that struggle. We hope that you'll join us.
