The article examines the activity of the editor of the newspaper “Moskovskye Vedomosti”, M.N. Katkov, especially the phenomenon of his exceptional political influence in the post-reform Russia. The research is based on the memoirs and correspondence of high-ranking officials of this time (P.A. Valuev, A.I. Golovnin, E.M. Feoktistov, K.P. Pobedonostsev, D.A. Tolstoy, etc.), as well as the reports of the political police and the censorship. Analyzing these documents, the author comes to the conclusion that since the 1870s Katkov did not pay attention to the task of expanding his publications' popularity with the general readers, but mainly focused on expanding his personal contacts in the sphere of higher bureaucracy. «Moskovskye Vedomosti» became very popular with the limited audience, consisting of officials, who relied on Katkov for the reasoning of their actions and verified the direction of the general political movement of the upper classes in order to conform with it their personal political course. The newspaper was the focal center of the certain bureaucratic party and a lot of its members owed there career promotion to Katkov and valued his sympathy as the guarantee of their social position stability. This largely explains the phenomenon of exceptional political influence of the editor of the unpopular newspaper with limited circulation.