Eleven journalists, including the chief editor, quit Delo.ua, a Ukrainian business news website, after its surprise sale to a businessman with controversial reputation.
In their statement, the journalists said their views about the website’s development strategy were different from those of the new owner.
The new owner is Kostyantyn Parshyn, a businessman from Dnipro, who is new to the media business. Parshyn owns a training center for civilians and military called Patriot tactical school. In 2011, he was convicted of embezzlement, but the conviction was later annulled and his record cleared.
Parshyn didn’t answer requests for comments. In a statement put out through Mmr.ua, a sister website to Delo.ua that he also now owns, Parshyn said he wasn’t going to interfere in the website’s editorial policy.
Speaking off-the-record out of fear to hurt Delo.ua and the remaining colleagues, some journalists said they were shocked when the identity of the new owner was revealed.
Delo.ua was sold as part of the Ekonomika+ media group, which also includes a marketing news website Mmr.ua and a lifestyle website Womo.ua.
The exodus of journalists over an ownership change and expectation of censorship are recurring events in Ukraine, which takes the 101st place in the global Press Freedom Ranking by Reporters Without Borders.
The Ukrainian edition of Forbes magazine experienced something similar in 2013, when UMH media group (which included Forbes) was sold to Ukrainian businessman Serhiy Kurchenko, an associate of then-President Viktor Yanukovych. The previous year, the magazine published an investigation on Kurchenko, then a low-key oligarch. Thirteen journalists left in protest “against an attempt to change editorial policy.” The magazine slowly died: it lost its license in 2015 and shut down next year.
Irina Rubis, the former owner and CEO of Ekonomika+, refused to comment on the reasons for sale or the price of a deal, or why Parshyn had decided to buy the media two months before Ukraine’s presidential election.
Only three journalists have stayed at Delo.ua, according to Daria Kurenkova, now the former editor-in-chief of the website. Several dozens more people who work on other projects of Ekonomika+ stayed.
“The fact that part of the team is not ready to restructure from one business development strategy to another, from one management style to another, is not a surprise,” Rubis told Mmr.ua on Feb. 11.
Parshyn said his team had suggested that the journalists expand their range of publications, paying more attention to the analysis of economic indicators, and that they increase their work output.
“That’s why we were accused of attempting to intervene in editorial policy,” said Parshyn.
The sale took place on Feb.4, when the new owner introduced Ilya Chudnovskiy as the new CEO. Chudnovskiy used to run Capital, a daily business newspaper in 2012- 2014. An expensive media project, Capital never revealed who its investors were, fueling the rumors that it was funded by someone from the circle of Yanukovych. Most attributed its ownership to then-Head of the National Bank Serhiy Arbuzov, who fled Ukraine in 2014 after the EuroMaidan Revolution swept the Yanukovych regime. Capital stopped publishing a print edition in 2014.
Olena Shkarpova, the media director of Vox Ukraine who was one of the 13 journalists who quit Forbes, was among those watching the exodus of Delo.ua journalists with a painful feeling.
“Nothing has changed in the Ukrainian media over the past 10 years,” Shkarpova told the Kyiv Post.
“I hope that there will be time when Ukrainian media owners will include very strict conditions on non-interference in the editorial policy in the contracts when selling their media,” she added. “Otherwise, all this media business isn’t serious.”
