As an ink-stained wretch for 43 years, I speak from experience when I say that newsrooms aren’t usually pretty places. But that was part of the allure for me. The first newspaper where I worked at professionally, starting at age 17, was old, grimy, and smoky – it fit all the clichés.
The work was done on manual typewriters. The managing editor, David Kranz, a saint who left the world too early in 2018, had stacks of newspapers and other documents on his desk in a glass-paneled cubicle where I went almost daily after high school classes for my real education in life. He smoked cigars and some days his bachelor diet seemed to consist mainly of bottles of Coca-Cola and peanut butter crackers from the vending machine.
I loved the noise – the sound of activity, the feeling of being at the center of the news universe. Although we most certainly weren’t in Mitchell, South Dakota, attitude is everything, sometimes.
The Associated Press newswire never stopped noisily spitting out the latest news and I’d often go over to check what was happening in the world. Everything was done on the premises – writing, editing, laying out pages, and printing the newspaper. I loved the smell of newsprint from the first scent and loved the sound of the printing presses churning out newspapers.
Even grungier was the Minnesota Daily, the university newspaper housed in the basement of the journalism hall. But that place still stands out as transformative, 40 years later, for the characters that passed through the place.
My surroundings never improved much over the decades – chair, desk, phone, and, later, computer – with dozens of other colleagues, some of whom went on to greatness and Pulitzer Prizes, in big open newsrooms. That’s about all a reporter needed. Even when newspapers were profitable, you’d often never know it by looking at the places where journalists worked.
Over my career, the office became a bit more antiseptic. Indoor smoking was banned by the 1990s. Printing presses were moved off-site, and then sold entirely – with the printing of the newspaper completely outsourced to specialized printing companies.
The Kyiv Post newsroom on its first working day on 68 Zhylianska St. on Aug. 31, 2020.cl
The digital age of newspapers could have theoretically killed such a place, but it hasn’t – and never will, I predict.
Although no news happens in a newsroom, as they say, this is where journalists congregate and build on each other’s knowledge and understanding of the world.
For the Kyiv Post, most of our office digs were old and, objectively, ugly.
I remember the worn-out carpet on Lesia Ukrainka, where we worked from one small room with bad computers. I remember the campus-like atmosphere of Bazhana Street when KP Media, owner of the Kyiv Post, had more than a dozen publications and the company employed hundreds.
Then we were sold and packed in like sardines in the airless Saksahanskoho Street office, then split among four floors in a new place on Prorizna Street – right in the heart of the Golden Gate neighborhood. That was nice.
Our owner then took us far out of the center to his new Rialto Center complex.
What’s a newspaper without journalists? An empty room. After discarding 577 kilograms of old newspapers, magazines, documents, and furniture, the Kyiv Post said goodbye to its newsroom home for the last eight years on 31a Pushkinska St.
We were so ready to get out of there after less than a year that we gladly traded new and remote for the dirty and dark Pushkinska Street office, where we enjoyed eight years of cheap rent and being in the heart of Kyiv.
But the roof leaked, the electrical and water supply was unreliable, and there was never enough room or any privacy. The wait for the two bathrooms was sometimes long, but the five-star Premier Palace hotel was right next door, fortunately, offering relief and a lobby bar. I’m happy to say that alcohol never left the newsroom culture.
One CEO was so embarrassed by our office that he wouldn’t invite guests to the newspaper. My reaction: We’re a poor but proud newspaper and our surroundings reflected our economic status.
Then, in a stroke of divine luck for which we cannot claim credit, a man named Adnan Kivan discovered the Kyiv Post, took an interest in our brand of independent journalism, and bought the place in March 2018. Many of us, sadly at the time, didn’t know who he was, even though he was the biggest builder in Odesa, the Black Sea port city of 1 million people, and one of the biggest construction magnates in Ukraine. And we call ourselves journalists!
Life smiled on the Kyiv Post the day that this Syrian came along and scooped up this small newspaper with a big history of turning out great journalists and journalism since 1995 on a shoestring budget. Our fortunes quickly improved.
He made only one visit to the Pushkinska Street office and pronounced it unfit to work in. “Dirty,” he said.
Maybe that’s when he decided to do what he did.
Kyiv Post staff members happily adjust to their new surroundings on 68 Zhylianska St.
Because now, the golden era of Kyiv Post office space is upon us. We’ve got 455.9 square meters of shiny new, marble-floored workspace.
We’ve never had it so good. Journalists rarely have it this good in today’s world, a fact I’m trying to impress on some of the younger colleagues who don’t seem to understand. Journalists working in a respectable atmosphere? Who would have thought?
The furniture is top-of-the-line with electric adjustable desks that allow work from a standing position and comfortable, metal-framed chairs that won’t break (unlike our others). “It’s the desk I’ve always dreamed of,” said one colleague.
The room is bright and the four small private offices, kitchen, and conference room are enclosed in glass, giving an air of lightness and transparency.
This is going to work!
And the space is ample enough that, in today’s COVID-19 age, it’s easier for us to distance from each other.
While the closest metro stops are a 15-minute hike, we justify it as good for the body.
The first group photo of the Kyiv Post outside its new headquarters on 68 Zhylianska St. on the second floor of a 23-story mainly residential complex. About half of the nearly 50 employees are present.
We’re actually not far from the center and have that rarest of privileges in Kyiv – dedicated parking spaces for cars and bicycles. Zhylianska Street is not trendy, with household flooring, a pet-food store, and flower shops as businesses nearby, but we could lead the way to the transformation. We’ve got vacant lots in front and behind.
And, in a greatly appreciated act of symbolism, Kivan made a grand gesture when he put us on the second floor of the KADORR Group building and emblazoned our street entrance with the Kyiv Post logo – giving us permanence and prominence, as we share space with his sales agents, corporate staff and Odesa Channel 7 colleagues in a 23-floor skyscraper mainly filled with apartments.
I’m bad at pricing this type of real estate. But it must be a $20 million building and at least a half-million-dollar office. Whatever the figure, it’s a big investment — in Kyiv’s real estate market and in the future of independent English-language journalism in Ukraine.
Adnan Kivan, an Odesa businessman who bought the Kyiv Post on March 21, 2018, displays a print edition of the newspaper at the Kyiv Post CEO Breakfast on May 31, 2018. (Oleg Petrasiuk)
“It’s yours, my friend. You’ve earned it,” he told me with his usual dramatic flourish. “It’s my gift to the Kyiv Post.”
We moved in today. We hope we never move out. Working in a perfect office makes one motivated to publish a better, if not perfect, newspaper.
