In Moscow, English Press Makes News : Media: Newspaper war breaks out between new publications. Their target? Thousands of affluent expatriates.

Arthur de Cordova plans to read this city’s new daily paper on the subway home from work. In English.

“I think it’s great they’re coming out with a daily,” said the pharmaceutical salesman from Darien, Conn. “There’s so many things to be covered here.”

David Lee has already found a church to attend, thanks to the same publication. “I’ve advertised my services in it. In fact, I get most of my information from that newspaper,” added Lee, a lawyer from Knoxville, Tenn.

Once, people in Moscow who wanted a daily local paper had to choose between Pravda and Trud or other ho-hum propaganda sheets in Russian.

No longer.

The foreign-written, foreign-managed Moscow Times made its debut as a daily paper Friday and, from now on, will be printing five times a week.

The Times is just one contestant in a virtual newspaper war that has broken out in the Russian capital, fueled by the presence of as many as 80,000 foreign residents--an estimated 25,000 of whom are native English speakers.

In general, these expatriates are an affluent group--diplomats, business people and foreign correspondents--that hawkers of hard-currency goods and services are eager to reach.

“Our representative is looking for new media to advertise in all the time,” said Ille Ruskomaa, manager for the Moscow clothing outlet of Stockmann’s, a Finnish firm.

The Moscow Times, which had been publishing twice a week since March, is competing for this juicy, information-starved market with the Moscow Guardian--a full-color magazine--and the Moscow Tribune--a new weekly. No U.S. newspaper has a financial interest in any of the three.

Increasingly, the English-language publications are also being read by Russians, many of whom have access to U.S. dollars, British pounds and German marks. In one reader survey, the Moscow Times found that about a third of its readers are Russians.

The tabloid-size Moscow Times is undertaking its task seriously, drawing its chief journalist from the Paris-based International Herald Tribune and hiring more than 25 other reporters from six nations.

“We expect it to become an influential paper read by influential people, both Western and Russian,” said editor in chief Meg Bortin, who also worked in Moscow as a correspondent for the British news agency Reuters from 1986 to 1988.

The Moscow Times plans to fill its 24 pages with a mix of breaking stories about politics and business plus community-oriented features such as restaurant listings and art reviews.

The maiden daily edition carried reports from around the globe, with a lead story on lackluster popular response to the first day of Russia’s privatization voucher program. A front-page letter from publisher Derk Sauer assured readers that they “will be informed and inspired daily by the Moscow Times.”

Some of the news the reporters unearth may come from the past. Each day the paper plans to highlight what was happening here 25, 50 and 75 years ago, using information dug out of the now-declassified KGB and Soviet Communist Party archives.

In this city of 9 million where many foreigners are unable to speak Russian, the Moscow Times seems to provide a steady, understandable source of news and information.

While its coverage tends to focus on local events, particularly the never-ending saga of the Russian government’s attempts to implement reforms, the paper seems to be expanding its efforts to gather news throughout the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Twenty-five thousand copies of the Moscow Times are now available free at hotels, hard-currency stores, apartment buildings and other places frequented by non-Russians. The paper plans to carry a cover price next year, charging $295 for a year of local delivery, $860 if flown to the United States.

Although the newspaper is not yet operating at a profit, publisher Sauer said business is so good that there is a waiting list for advertisers. A full page costs as much as $3,000.

Sauer, who was editor of the popular magazine Nieuwe Revu in his native Netherlands before coming to Moscow, said that a team of Dutch investors and hopeful capitalists from other countries has invested “a few hundred thousand dollars” in the daily venture.

The Moscow Times’ near lock on non-Russian readers and advertisers is being challenged by the Moscow Tribune, which reappeared last month. It was published as a weekly newsletter in 1989-90 and has been resurrected because “it’s a different country now,” said one of its three editors, Anthony Louis.

Louis, 24, is no stranger to Moscow’s journalism scene. His Soviet-born father, the late Victor Louis, was the Moscow correspondent for London’s Evening News and was often the willing conduit chosen by the KGB to ferry the Kremlin’s version of events, including blatant disinformation, to the West.

The younger Louis believes the Moscow Times’ transition to a subscription newspaper leaves room for a second daily paper. “Some people are complaining that they (the Moscow Times) are practicing sloppy reporting and they have this self-satisfied kind of attitude,” he said.

The Tribune receives its main funding--in the “six-figure range,” Louis claimed--from Information Moscow, an English-language telephone directory that his family has published for 27 years.

Information Moscow’s longstanding relationship with many businesses here, coupled with advertising rates that are one-third those of the Moscow Times, could give the Tribune a good start in its plan to go daily next year.

In its first few issues, the Tribune has leaned heavily on prepackaged information from the news agencies. In its own reports, it recounted how Czar Nicholas II’s bones were shipped to Britain for identification and how hawks are kept by Kremlin groundskeepers to kill and eat pesky crows.

Then there is the Moscow Guardian, a weekly magazine. Owned and printed by Commersant, a Russian business newspaper, it aims to follow in the footsteps of alternative papers such as the L.A. Weekly. Recent cover stories profiled Moscow’s version of the Hell’s Angels, the city’s fledgling casinos and Russia’s fast-growing sex industry.

“Our paper has a personality that no one else does,” said Billy Rogers, the Guardian’s 30-year-old editor in chief and a former Democratic Party political consultant from Austin, Tex. “Some of our writers see things that other people don’t.”

To demonstrate the Guardian’s personality, Rogers pointed to Bob Lichenstein Jr., the magazine’s humorist. Lichenstein’s weekly column, “Bob’s Page,” pokes fun at some popular targets, from U.S. politicians to Moscow’s barely functioning telephone system.

It was Lichenstein, for example, who discovered the undeniable resemblance of Acting Prime Minister Yegor T. Gaidar to Yoda, the “Star Wars” character.

The Guardian has been accused of bad taste by some readers, including one U.S. diplomat who had the magazine barred from distribution on the U.S. Embassy’s grounds. That ban, which apparently was not sanctioned by anyone in a position of authority, was lifted after three weeks.

Although the Times, Tribune and Guardian differ in content and appeal, many Westerners read all three, snatching whichever one they come across in their travels through the capital.

“It’s nice to have something to read around Moscow,” said Nancy Joyce, a Boston native who works here for RUI-Apple Computers. “If I can get them free, I’ll read them all.”