Aside from a very brief and failed stint as a bartender, Alexey Kovalev has never worked outside journalism, starting as a novice reporter on the metro beat at a now defunct local daily in Moscow and progressing through the ranks to the editor in chief of one of Russia's most popular news websites. In 2015 he founded an independent propaganda-busting and investigative journalism website called The Noodle Remover — a play on a popular Russian expression "to put noodles on someone's ears," meaning to lie.

Life before Coda: RIA Novosti, London bureau chief for Snob.ru, news desk editor at The Moscow Times

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