The eXile—the much hated/beloved Moscow biweekly that launched the career of Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi and continued to publish the works of Russian dissident author Eduard Limonov well after it had become dangerous to do so—has reached its fatal end with the censorship authorities in the new Medvedev government.

From the English language daily The Moscow Times:

Mark Ames, editor and founder of The eXile, was scheduled to meet Thursday with inspectors from the Federal Service for Mass Media, Telecommunications and the Protection of Cultural Heritage, he said by telephone Wednesday...

Ames said he did not know which articles were of interest to the inspectors, but he suggested that one possibility were columns by Eduard Limonov, founder of the banned National Bolshevik Party and a vehement Kremlin foe.

He conceded that many other eXile editions could have riled the authorities.

The eXile, which publishes Gonzo-style journalism on topics such as drugs, prostitution and Moscow nightlife side-by-side with political analysis, has often pushed the limits of decency -- not to mention libel law.

The speculation was later confirmed by Mark Ames himself in Radar—wherein he notes the special joys of running a collapsed business venture co-owned by a member of the notoriously unkind world of Russian organized crime.

It's not to say that The eXile was always an insightful or even a particularly well written paper; when Taibbi departed for life back in America, Ames often covered for a shortage of ideas with the laundry list of things he'd inject into himself to better enjoy listening to Husker Du, or his successful transactions with Moscow’s prostitutes. But quality dips aside, The eXile was an important document chronicling the descent of Russia from Yeltsin's wild, lawless kleptocracy to Putin's new police state. They called 'bullshit!' loudly and earnestly on America's aimless privatization plan for the post-Soviet Russian state, and when the going got rough, they settled a dispute with New York Times Moscow bureau chief Michael Wines by hitting him in the face with a horse semen pie.

They were occasionally demeaning and stupid, but they were never dull—and that has to count for something in the grand scheme of media. The paper is holding a fundraiser to help get their website infrastructure hosted somewhere off of Russian soil, and probably to keep Ames from being murdered by his business partners.