According to sources in the Russian media, the firing of respected editor Raf Shakirov was initiated by the Kremlin, which was infuriated by newspaper coverage of the Beslan hostage drama.
Speaking to Radio Free Europe, Shakirov said that the newspaper's owner, Prof-Media company, was displeased with how Izvestia covered the tragedy, which saw Muslim Chechen terrorists take more than 1,000 children and teachers hostage.
On Saturday, Izvestia ran photos of some of the the 350 victims, some of whom were shot in the back by terrorists, and questioned the authorities' handling of the crisis, which has come in for widespread criticism.
Investors found the Saturday issue of Izvestia "too emotional and poster-style", he said.
Izvestia published some of the most thorough, probing accounts of the crisis, and it was one of the earliest Russian media outlets to doubt the government's estimate that about 350 hostages were being held captive in the school.
On Saturday, a spokesperson for the regional government in North Ossetia, where the hostage-taking occurred, said that 1,181 hostages had been squeezed into the school.
During the crisis, state-owned Russian media tried to ignore what was going on. On Friday, when the drama was coming to an end, two of the main state-owned Russian TV channels did not interrupt their regular programming.
Channel One and Rossia continued showing a film and a documentary respectively while CNN, the BBC and EuroNews were broadcasting live pictures of children in their underwear, covered in blood, running through the streets of Beslan. CNN and the BBC ran live footage almost an hour before the news got to the main state channels in Russia.
Oleg Panfilov, director of the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations, told The Moscow Times: "The only chance for Russians to understand what was going on was Ekho Moskvy or the internet. Our media were unable to fulfill their job."
Shakirov said that he wanted to represent what the situation meant to Russia. He compared the tragedy with when Hitler's Germany attacked the Soviet Union.
Shakirov is a well-respected editor within the Russian media. In 1997, he became editor-in-chief of the Kommersant-Daily newspaper. However, in March 1999, he was dismissed in connection with an article criticising the then Russian prime minister, Yevgeny Primakov.
Izvestia was founded at the birth of the Russian revolution in 1917 in St Petersburg.
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