The 17-year veteran of Äripäev, Bonnier Business Press’s Estonian business daily newspaper, speaks candidly about hard choices, leadership lessons, and what chess couldn’t teach him about managing people.
Igor Rõtov laughs easily. The shoulders of his checked tweed jacket are wide and loose, and when he jokes with his colleagues, you can see the chuckle in those big shoulders. An outsider might wonder what Rõtov has to laugh about, given the burden those shoulders bear—the economic situation for most business-to-business papers is no joke. But Rõtov has a good reason to smile—he has kept Äripäev profitable through the roughest downturn in the paper's 20-year history.
