In the past six months, the Kyiv Post website has reached 42 million page views with six million unique readers. More than 70 percent are from the West – led by the United States with 35 percent, the European Union with 30 percent and Canada with eight percent.
The mainly Ukrainian editorial team produces more than 200 exclusive stories each month while aggregating thousands of top news about Ukraine from other sources. The paper is the most quoted source about Ukraine by Western media and second behind only Russia’s Kommersant in the former Soviet Union.
Behind the Ukraine’s global voice is a team of 15 journalists, plus occasional interns, who have been reporting non-stop for the last eight months, often risking their lives on the streets during the EuroMaidan Revolution and now in eastern Ukraine.
My goal is to ensure that the Kyiv Post team has the resources to do this job well and that the newspaper provides value and the best customer service to its subscribers and advertisers. The previous leadership has done a tremendous job of the adjusting business model to the changing market. My objective is to build on and expand this good practice.
Here’s my vision:
Business side
Website and applications: We will make our website more modern, tailored to the needs of our audience, and with better marketing opportunities for our advertisers. We plan to develop mobile and iPad apps.
Online advertising solutions: We will launch Online Solutions to offer package deals, long-term partnerships and marketing advice. Given the growing global traffic to the Kyiv Post’s website, with 50 percent of our readers being senior managers, Online Solutions is a cost-effective marketing tool for companies seeking to attract investment and customers from abroad – especially in light of Ukraine’s new Association Agreement with the European Union. We also will focus on foreign companies seeking to enter the Ukrainian market and others that are expanding.
Distribution and print advertising solutions: We are revising the list of places where you can pick up a print copy of Kyiv Post to make it easily accessible. The new distribution map will provide a better value proposition to our print advertisers. We will have traditional Business Focuses such as the Legal Quarterly and World in Ukraine, as well as new specialized coverage on exporters, technology and education. We are seeking advertising sponsors to support these sections.
Subscription: We are addressing problems with the online payment system, as our readers, especially in North America, experienced problems with subscribing. Afterwards, we will launch a global subscription campaign.
Kyiv Post Events: We aim for excellence in Kyiv Post conferences and events — in terms of quality of content, networking and organization — to provide better value for participants and to improve public debate about crucial issues in Ukraine.
The upcoming KP Employment Fair on Sept. 13 will feature not only top companies, but also careers in international organizations and civil service. We have a more targeted approach to attracting top talent, including those with international experience. The fair will include career advice sessions with some of the most successful business leaders and hiring managers in Ukraine. We invite you to join as a business, job seeker or speaker.
The major KP event of the year – the Tiger Conference — will focus on the hottest issues confronting Ukraine.
Coverage
Besides the core political, war and business coverage, in partnership with editorial, we plan to launch or strengthen the following initiatives.
Community reach: The Kyiv Post has traditionally been a community paper. With a growing number of Ukrainians taking leadership positions in multinational companies and an increasing English-speaking population in Ukraine, we hope to reach an expanding audience. We want to launch a new CEO Talk to feature current and new faces among business leaders. We aim to revive the classified ad section to feature job postings, real estate, services, and professional events.
An improved Lifestyle section will provide both a calendar of events and exclusive stories for those residing in Kyiv as well as a comprehensive guide to Kyiv for first-time visitors.
We are currently seeking support from the IT community to institute a tech journalism fellowship at Kyiv Post to provide reporting on technology and innovations, the fastest-growing industry in Ukraine, highly competitive on international stage.
We are also seeking sponsors to institute a Reform Watch project, tracking and bringing to light the progress of key critical reforms being undertaken by the government.
Center for journalism excellence
For years, the Kyiv Post has been a place that nurtures talent.
Some of our prominent alumni include James Marson, the deputy bureau chief of The Wall Street Journal’s Moscow bureau; Roman Olearchuk, the Financial Times correspondent in Ukraine; Jakub Parusinki, an MBA candidate at Insead Business School; Anastasia Forina, currently a fellow at the Chicago Tribune who will be returning to the Kyiv Post in September.
Recently, a group of Kyiv Post journalists launched the nonprofit Media Development Foundation, with three missions: improving investigative journalism, conducting student journalism exchanges and training professional journalists.
The chief executive officer should be the chief value officer for readers, clients, partners, subscribers and the whole team that makes up the Kyiv Post, which will celebrate its 19th birthday on Oct. 18. There are no easy solutions in the news media world, which is undergoing upheaval. But building long-term partnerships with clients and staying on top of the demands of readers are how we intend to preserve the Kyiv Post’s reputation embodied in its “Independence. Community. Trust” motto.
Kyiv Post chief executive officer Nataliya Bugayova can be reached at [email protected]
