I wasn’t planning to become a journalist when I graduated from a university in Vinnytsya in 1997. I moved to Kyiv and I was looking for a decent job. A friend of mine I shared an apartment with told me a vacancy popped up in the English-language newspaper he worked in. I was a teacher of English by education, so I decided to give a try.
My interview at the Kyiv Post lasted for about five minutes. Chief editor Igor Greenwald and business editor Euan MacDonald pretty much figured out I wasn’t an idiot and my English was good. They obviously need to fill a gap as soon as possible – the situation I often found myself in later as a manager. The thing that worried them most was whether I could start the next day. Of course, I could. That was how I landed a job with the ambitious title of business researcher.
In reality, it meant that I had to compile charts with various business and economic data. To obtain the figures I had to – among other things – visit officials at the State Statistics Committee and the Transportation Ministry. They weren’t eager to cooperate with a newspaper they could barely pronounce. So I had to buy their loyalty with obedience and little New Year’s gifts.
The real professional value of working at the Kyiv Post was coming not from the charts but from people. American journalists believed the government owes them because they elected it, not vice versa. They had no mercy for the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv and encouraged us, the Ukrainian journalists, to treat the Ukrainian government the same way. They took journalistic standards and professional integrity seriously. They were insulted, if somebody could even hint he wanted a paid article or a sweet story on an advertiser. And the last thing – they worked hard, and it contrasted with the general attitude that Ukrainians, or any post-Soviet citizens, had towards work. American journalists came from a competitive world where you have to fight for a job and prove you are fit for it, or risk sinking into professional oblivion.
I learned to compile my charts quickly which left me time to translate interviews for the U.S. and British reporters. There I learn how to prepare, ask questions and – most importantly – how confident you can be. At one interview the Economist journalist Anna Reid – I interpreted it as a freelancer – argued with parliament speaker Oleksandr Moroz on whether agricultural land should put up for sale. He persisted no and gave his arguments, she pushed for yes, and nearly caged him. No Ukrainian journalist would dare. Reid told me to think about becoming a reporter, or I would never be able to ask my own questions.
The Kyiv Post is celebrating the 20th anniversary of its existence this year. The newspaper was first published on Oct. 18, 1995.
So I did. When British journalist Askold Krushelnycky replaced American Igor Greenwald, he thought I was ready. My first piece was in co-authorship, and it was about miners on strike. They walked from the Donbas to Kyiv to demand overdue wages. They were banging their helmets against the sidewalk on Hrushevskogo Street and looked like a big force. We wrote about how Kyivans supported these guys with everything they could. The next piece was about an elephant called Boy that was transported to an ugly Kyiv zoo from a nice and warm place somewhere in the West. It was a good anti-arrogance class – the story was popular.
I learned how to structure stories, use quotes and make leads and – an important skill for an editor – what constitutes a story idea and what doesn’t. A couple of years afterwards I became nation and then business editor, and now edited Americans and Canadians myself. And these guys from the U.S. weren’t losers. A lot of my colleagues later moved to work for the Associated Press, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times and The New Yorker. I worked at the Kyiv Post for six years and saw seven chief editors before publisher U.S. citizen Jed Sunden offered me to head the Russian-language Korrespondent weekly magazine, part of the same media holding.
We transferred to Korrespondent all the American work principles and journalistic standards that we had at the Post. Two years afterwards it boomed to become one of the most respected titles in Ukraine. We published a photo essay of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s mansion from the air and investigated real sources of his income. We used his friends to get to illegal coal mines controlled by his son Oleksandr and did a report that would bring him 15 years in jail somewhere in Germany.
More than 100 people had gone through Korrespondent during my 10 years at the magazine as chief editor. For some of them, it was the first place where journalists weren’t ask to do paid articles. In November 2013, I left Korrespondent when Yanukovych’s associate Sergei Kurchenko purchased it and introduced a new editorial policy. It was simple – a ban on criticizing five individuals, including the president and his son, and a number of other exotic innovations. Dozens of people who, over the past five to eight years got a flavor of real journalism, left with me.
I found a new investor and we launched a new weekly magazine called Novoye Vremya and a website. If not already, it will be more popular than Korrespondent in six months. Folders in editorial network in Novoye Vremya are still named in English – the same way they were in the Kyiv Post and then Korrespondent.
When people ask me what needs to happen for Ukrainian media to change, I answer that media with international standards need to arrive. They educate hundreds of journalists, introduce new standards and undermine competitors that take bribes or service their owners.
They do make a long-lasting difference. The Kyiv Post was the biggest of them.
Vitaly Sych is the chief editor of Novoye Vremya weekly magazine and website.
