The newsroom at Moscow's Novaya Gazeta does not feel like a battleground. It's a series of cramped, fluorescent-lit offices, as quiet as a library in the hallways. But behind the closed doors, there's energy. Young journalists (average age: around 30) pore over the stories and photographs that will make the next day's issue of a newspaper in a very dangerous business--being the most strident voice of opposition in Vladimir Putin's Russia.
For a taste of the paper's editorial outlook, just talk to Dmitri Muratov, its editor in chief. "Putin has created the largest, richest bureaucracy in the world, and the funds...