Spring weather: planting journalistic seeds in Ukrainian soil

Spring has arrived -- here's a picture of some kind of bird (is that too technical?) that I saw outside the JIA offices. I've finally been able to ditch my winter coat.

The headline for this blog item is meant to be a joke -- or perhaps, a subtle dig at the differences between traditional Ukrainian journalism and more modern journalism as it's practiced in the U.S., in many other countries and in some Ukrainian publications.

The traditional approach tends to be flowery and philosophical; a story might begin with a famous quote or longwinded observation, then segue to the writer's thoughts, and then -- maybe then, a dozen paragraphs deep -- explain what the article is about.

Selma and I are trying to show an alternative: stories that get to the point more quickly. We're not saying the old way is bad or wrong; maybe it was right for when that format was created. But nowadays, people are busy, and they will skip over a story if they don't see what it's about and why they should care.

We also advocate a journalistic approach and reporting style called civic journalism, which means approaching the news from the readers' perspective. In civic journalism, you try to get a lot of reader voices -- not just official opinions -- into your stories; and you try to empower readers, not just inform them.

Next week, Selma and I will be in Mariupol, doing a civic journalism workshop for journalism students at Mariupol State University of the Humanities. (I'll do one day of Internet training, on Tuesday, then we'll do the civic journalism workshop on Wednesday.)

For the workshop, I wrote two stories -- one in the traditional Ukrainian style, the other in the civic journalism style. Both stories are the same length. We plan to show the stories, one at a time, to students and ask: Which one do you prefer?

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Budget season at city hall

To everything there is a season: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to reap. In fall, squirrels begin stockpiling nuts for the winter; in spring, flowers in our beautiful city begin to bloom.

Spring is also the time when the leaders of our city must prepare a budget for the coming year. The city has many needs, and not enough money to take care of them all, says our mayor, Taras Kozlov. One thing he would like to do is raise the salaries for teachers and other municipal workers by 4 percent. To do this, Mayor Kozlov has proposed a slight increase in communal taxes. The taxes would go up 10 percent under his plan.

The mayor announced his plan at the city council meeting last week. Next week, the council will meet to discuss the plan, after holding a public hearing. The new city budget will take effect June 1.

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Here's your chance to speak out about the city budget

Citizens will have an opportunity next week to tell city officials how they feel about the mayor's proposed city budget, which would increase municipal worker salaries but also communal taxes for next year.

The city council will hold a public hearing on the budget at 7 p.m. Wednesday at city hall. If you want to speak, you must sign up by Tuesday. Mayor Taras Kozlov has proposed raising the salaries for teachers and other municipal workers by 4 percent. To fund the increase, he has proposed increasing communal taxes by 10 percent. That would mean an increase of about 500 UAH a year for the average family.

Sveta Korolyova, who teaches at the local primary school, says she plans to speak at the hearing in support of the mayor's plan. "Teachers deserve more money," she said.

Aleksey Smirnov, who lives in a flat off Prospect Lenin, also plans to speak -- but against the mayor's plan. "Taxes are already too high," he said.

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Exercises like this, of course, are always risky: What if the students say they prefer the first version? Suppose their teachers, who'll be attending the workshop, say the same thing?

We've been busy this week: On Wednesday, the first issue of "BOOM!" was published. For a student publication, it's pretty good. [When I get a digital copy, I'll post at least a thumbnail.] And the students at Karazin National University have already started planning issue No. 2.

On Thursday, we had an organizational meeting of the Young Journalists Training Academy, which the JIA has organized. This is a step above doing university newspapers. The eight or so people who've signed up for the academy will be doing stories for the Slobids'kyj Krai newspaper, the oldest in Kharkiv.

On Friday and today (Saturday), Selma, Angelina and I led a roundtable discussion involving about eight editors whose newspapers probably will be privatized over the next few years. Right now, these papers are the official publications of local or regional governments -- they're basically PR. When they go private and lose their subsidies, they'll need to depend on advertising and readership.

We talked about how civic journalism fits into privatization: When you have a paper that people want to read, they'll buy it -- and advertisers will buy ads in it.

The editors at the roundtable shared some great stories of what they already do to build community support: One organized a "subbotnik" -- a volunteer cleanup day -- to beautify a neglected park; 500 people turned out. Another editor sent a reporter with a group of citizens from his town who went to Kiev to check out a chicken-raising operation: A similar poultry plant has been proposed for the town, and people were debating whether overall this would be a good thing (jobs) or a bad thing (pollution).

If the U.S.S.R. had a Mount Rushmore ...

... this is what it might look like:



I came across a store selling these monuments and statues after visiting the Central Market -- about a 20-minute walk from my apartment. Imagine decorating your home or garden with some pieces like this:



I wish I could take some of these home -- but the weight, not to mention the political factors, would make that impossible.

I wonder how they're selling in Ukraine, which has a decidedly love-hate relationship with Russia. For example, in Donestk, the city utility used billboards with Stalin's picture in an advertising campaign urging people to pay their electric bills. The backlash was so strong that this week, the campaign was pulled.

Also this week, President Yushchenko called for a law to make it a crime to deny the Holomodor, the Soviet-induced famine that killed millions of Ukrainians in 1932-33. The law also would apply to the Holocaust.

Boom! -- Vol. 1, Issue 1, is almost ready

We met today with the students at Karazin National University who are creating an independent student newspaper. They have finished writing all the stories (and have a lot left over for Issue No. 2). Over the weekend, the students did the layout for a four-page paper.

Today, we looked at the proofs. The students scrutinized every word and made notes about things to be corrected or fixed. Final changes will be made by Friday; 1,000 copies will be printed on Saturday; and then Vol. 1, Issue 1, will be distributed on Monday.

We’ll meet with the Karazin students again on Tuesday to begin work on the second issue. Initially, the students were planning to publish one issue a month. But now, they're considering producing two issues a month. Everyone agreed that it's a lot of work but well worth it. Here's a photo of one of the students, Aleena, with the proof copy of the first issue of BOOM!.

The view from Vinnitsa

We just got back from Vinnitsa. Long trip: Selma, Angelina and I did a two-day workshop on civic journalism on Friday and Saturday; then Selma and Angelina went to Kiev while Yulia and I did a workshop on computer-assisted reporting on Sunday; then Yulia and I caught a train to Kiev Sunday evening; then we all met up to take the overnight train from Kiev to Kharkiv (it left at 10:30 p.m. Sunday and arrived around 6:30 a.m. Monday).

The training went well; the participants seemed pleased. We included a lot of small-group discussions and exercises:



We didn't have much time to explore Vinnitsa, but I did get to the museum and other sites pertaining to Nikolay Pirogov, a famous doctor, scientist and public figure who lived his final decades in Vinnitsa. According to Wikipedia:

He is considered to be the founder of field surgery, and was one of the first surgeons in Europe to use ether as an anaesthetic. He was the first surgeon to use anaesthesia in a field operation (1847), invented various kinds of surgical operations, and developed his own technique of using plaster casts to treat fractured bones. His name is one of the most widely recognised in Russian medical history, and he is considered a Russian national hero. ...

Pirogov introduced the system of triage -- dividing injured soldiers into categories. He also encouraged the female volunteers as nurses. And he's credited with saving the leg if not the life of Guiseppi Garibaldi during the war to liberate and unify Italy.

Here is a photo of Elena, one of the reporters who attended the workshops, and Yulia, our translator, outside the Pirogov museum:



Across the street from our hotel in Vinnitsa was a nice restaurant called Tete-a-Tete. On Saturday night, Angelina, Yulia and I had dinner with Igor, one of the workshop participants who operates the city's radio station. It was an interesting discussion: Besides being a media executive, Igor is also a deputy in the city government. Angelina feels strongly that that's a conflict of interest; Igor argued otherwise.

Вінниця, or Винница, or Vinnitsa, or Vinnytsya

On Thursday, we head to the city of Вінниця (that's the Ukrainian spelling) in central Ukraine, well west of Kiev. Selma, Angelina and I -- with our translator, Yulia -- will be doing two days of civic journalism training for a group of newspaper and radio journalists. That happens on Friday and Saturday. Then, Selma and Angelina are going to head to Kiev, and I will spend Sunday doing a workshop on computer-assisted reporting.

Here is what Wikipedia says about where we're going:

Vinnytsia (Ukrainian: Вінниця, Russian: Винница, translit. Vinnitsa; also referred to as Vinnytsya, Polish: Winnica) is a city located on the banks of the Southern Buh River river, in central Ukraine. ... The current estimated population is 332,400.

Vinnytsia is located about 260 km from the Ukrainian capital, Kiev (Kyiv), 429 km from the port city - Odessa (Odesa), and 369 km from Lviv.

Vinnytsia was an important trade and political center of note since as early as the sixteenth century. More specifically, the city played a significant role during Cossack wars as well as during World War II. Great Purge victims' graves were exhumed by the Germans in 1943.

Adolf Hitler sited his easternmost headquarters near the town and spent a number of weeks there in 1942 and early 1943.

Famous people from Vinnytsia

Alexander Lerner Soviet-Israeli cybernetic and dissident.

Mykhailo Kotsybyns’ky Ukrainian author of novels and short stories. His home is a museum.

Nikolai Pirogov famous Russian doctor who retired here. His home is a museum and his chapel tomb is open to visitors.

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We're taking the train from Kharkiv to Vinnitsa -- 14 or 15 hours. On Sunday night, after the CAR workshop, Yulia and I will catch a train to Kiev, meet up with Selma and Angelina, then take a sleeper train back to Kharkiv. It leaves Kiev at 10:30 p.m. and arrives in Kharkiv at 6:30 a.m.

The city of Vinnitsa has a nice-looking Web site. It has a link to an English-language version, but it doesn't work.

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On a completedly unrelated note ... here are some photos of cats. First, one I saw today outside the JIA office:



And here's a cat waiting outside the metro station near the History Museum:

A trip to the зоопарк ('zoo park')

This morning, Selma and I met up with our translator, Yulia Zmulyukova, and her boyfriend Dima, and we took a walking tour of the city. We spent a few hours exploring the Kharkiv Zoo, which is 111 years old.

The zoo is right near my house. Admission costs 10 grivni -- $2 -- for adults. Here are some random photos. You'll find more on my Google Picasa Web Album at:

http://picasaweb.google.com/jeffrey.south/KharkivZoo

War memorials in Kharkiv

Kharkiv has been scarred by war. Here's a blurb from Wikipedia:

During World War II Kharkiv was the site of several military engagements. The city was captured by Nazi Germany and its military allies, recaptured by the Red Army, captured again twice by the Nazis and then finally liberated on August 23, 1943. Seventy percent of the city was destroyed and tens of thousands of the inhabitants were killed. It is mentioned that Kharkiv was the most populated city in the Soviet Union occupied by Nazis, since in the years preceding World War II Kiev was the smaller of the two by population.

That backdrop explain why there are many war memorials here. Aleksey and Angelina took us on a city tour today, and we saw some of them.

The bas-relief above is at a site out of the city center; that site also includes the statue below -- a woman, her clinched arm symbolizing patience:



It's traditional for couples getting married to visit this memorial on their wedding day and pay tribute to the soldiers who died. Aleksey and his wife, Irina, did that when they got married.

Solemn music plays from speakers located throughout the memorial. At the base of the woman's statue is an eternal flame:



There's another war momument, with another eternal flame, at a plaza across from city hall downtown. This memorial is near the history museum and several other sites.



In addition, here's a memorial I pass almost every day; it's located just off Freedom Square, near my house. I like the motion, and emotion, in this statue. People leave flowers and other gifts at the monuments.

Happy International Women's Day!

Kharkiv and the rest of Ukraine are enjoying a national holiday -- International Women's Day. Here's a Web site that explains the event:

http://www.internationalwomensday.com/

The holiday started out as a socialist thing but is now very capitalistic. In Ukraine, men buy flowers, candy and other gifts for the women in their lives. (One of the university students is doing a story about gift-giving for IWD. She surveyed what women want and what men are giving -- and found, not surprisingly, a big disconnect.)

Here's more about International Women's Day from the above-mentioned Web site:

IWD is now an official holiday in Armenia, Russia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Vietnam. The tradition sees men honouring their mothers, wives, girlfriends, colleagues, etc., with flowers and small gifts. In some countries, IWD has the equivalent status of Mother's Day where children give small presents to their mothers and grandmothers.

The new millennium has witnessed a significant change and attitudinal shift in both women's and society's thoughts about women's equality and emancipation. Many from a younger generation feel that 'all the battles have been won for women' while many feminists from the 1970's know only too well the longevity and ingrained complexity of patriarchy.

With more women in the boardroom, greater equality in legislative rights, and an increased critical mass of women's visibility as impressive role models in every aspect of life, one could think that women have gained true equality. The unfortunate fact is that women are still not paid equally to that of their male counterparts, women still are not present in equal numbers in business or politics, and globally women's education, health and the violence against them is worse than that of men.

However, great improvements have been made. We do have female astronauts and prime ministers, school girls are welcomed into university, women can work and have a family, women have real choices. And so the tone and nature of IWD has, for the past few years, moved from being a reminder about the negatives to a celebration of the positives.

Annually on 8 March, thousands of events are held throughout the world to inspire women and celebrate their achievements. While there are many large-scale initiatives, a rich and diverse fabric of local activity connects women from all around the world ranging from political rallies, business conferences, government activities and networking events through to local women's craft markets, theatric performances, fashion parades and more.

Many global corporations have also started to more actively support IWD by running their own internal events and through supporting external ones. For example, on 8 March search engine and media giant Google even changes its logo on its global search pages.

Corporations like HSBC host the UK's largest and longest running IWD event delivered by women's company Aurora. Last year Nortel sponsored IWD activities in over 20 countries and thousands of women participated. Nortel continues to connect its global workforce though a coordinated program of high-level IWD activity, as does Accenture both virtually and offline.

Accenture supports more than 2,000 of its employees to participate in its International Women's Day activities that include leadership development sessions, career workshops and corporate citizenship events held across six continents - in eight cities in the United States and in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Spain, South Africa and the UK. Accenture also coordinated an IWD webcast featuring stories about Accenture women worldwide that ran uninterrupted for 30 hours across 11 time zones via Accenture's intranet.

IWD is certainly increasing in status. The United States even designates the whole month of March as 'Women's History Month'.

So make a difference, think globally and act locally! Make everyday International Women's Day. Do your bit to ensure that the future for girls is bright, equal, safe and rewarding.

Stuck in Lenin's elevator

This morning, we visited the the Slobids'kyj Krai newspaper, which sent three staff members to Saturday's CAR workshop. It's a paper in transition.

On the one hand, the paper is owned by the regional government (the Kharkiv oblast). It's heavily dependent on government advertising and subsidies. The SK is the oldest paper in Kharkiv -- it's marking its 90th anniversary. (The editor, Volodimir Revenko, showed us a historic edition with Lenin on Page One.) The SK may be the only paper in Kharkiv that publishes in Ukrainian. (Ukrainian is the official government language -- and that may be why it's the language of the SK. But there could be another reason: The SK serves the Ukrainian-speaking rural areas around Kharkiv as well as the Russian-speaking urban area.)



The government is thinking about privatizing the Slobids'kyj Krai -- making it a private business. Mr. Revenko seems OK with that. He's a longtime journalist (30 years), and has good news instincts. He wants to expand his audience (go after younger readers) and his advertising base. But his staff consists mostly of older journalists who (Mr. Revenko says) are pretty set in their ways. He says he can't get them to do enterprise stories (he wanted a piece about conditions at a local orphanage, for example).

We talked about the situation for about three hours -- over tea, then cognac (Ukrainians are big on toasts). Mr. Revenko said that because of the government pay structure, his reporters have little incentive to work harder or differently, and that he can't fire them. He's instituted a quota system for stories, but that hasn't helped. Selma and I suggested things like building quality into the quotas. (For instance, if a reporter must do seven stories a week, make it clear that only two of those stories can rely on press releases and only two on government meetings. Or require reporters to quote a certain number of sources -- and a certain number of "real people," not government officials -- in stories.)

We all agreed that there are no easy solutions. Selma and I might come back to work with the SK on some things. In late March, we're going to start working with young journalists who want to do (or are already doing) freelance articles for the SK and other papers. Maybe our plans for a "young journalists' academy" can help change the newsroom culture.

The SK is located in an office building (I'm guessing seven stories) with several other newspapers; it's on the fourth floor, I think. We left at 2:30 to go to a meeting with the university students who want to produce "BOOOM!" But as we were going down in the elevator, it jammed between floors, and we were stuck for about 20 minutes. Fortunately, Mr. Revenko was with us; he called maintenance on his cell phone, and they manually raised the elevator car to a floor and pried open the doors. We finished our descent by stairs.



The SK provided a driver who took us to the university, where we had a good meeting. Almost all of the stories for the first issue of BOOOM! are in hand.

After dinner on Monday, we met with students at another university (an economics-engineering school not far from a metro station and a McDonald's) who also want advice on producing a newspaper. We spent an hour or so critiquing some of their stories.

Internet training on a rainy Saturday

Today, I conducted a computer-assisted reporting workshop for nine Kharkiv journalists. We held it at the Boiko School, which graciously allowed us to use their computer lab. What a terrific setup: Everybody had a computer with high-speed Internet access and all the software we needed (Internet Explorer and Excel).

The workshop focused on two things:

How to find information for news stories on the Internet. I showed my favorite Google "hacks": how to search a specific domain or Web site for documents containing a specific word or phrase (like searching the Ukrainian president's Web site for references to Chernobyl); how to see who "owns" a Web site (for example, who is behind Web sites that try to arrange Ukrainian marriages for American men); and how to search blogs for story ideas and people to quote in your stories.

How to use spreadsheets to analyze information for stories. We used Excel to sort data, filter data and do calculations. For example, we took World Health Organization data and found that in Ukraine, women live on average 8 years longer than men. That is way more than most other countries. We also took Ukrainian population data and calculated the ratio between divorces and marriages: One oblast had almost twice as many divorces as marriages; another had three times as many marriages as divorces. All these were good beginning points for stories, we agreed.

On the whole, I've found that Ukrainian journalists are technologically sophisticated. But I detected some "ah-ha!" moments in the room; so I think I managed to introduce some new skills.

The timing for this session was good: Google has been improving its Russian-language interface (finally, you can search for Russian-language news; unfortunately, Google's Ukrainian interface doesn't have that feature yet).

Google also has way to put a button on your Web browser that will instantly translate any Web page into another language. Moreover, whenever you click on a link on that page, the ensuing page also will be translated. Very cool.

I put my handouts and data for the session online; I'll soon post the Russian-language handouts, too. As we left the Boiko School, we noticed that somebody had decorated the gate with gloves:

What's your sign? Koshka or kot?

This is a cat that hangs out in the stairwell of my apartment building. Like Napster, my cat back in Richmond, this one prefers to be outside: It crawled through a broken window and is sitting on a ledge, exposed to the cold. (No, I did not chase it there!)

In Russian, a female cat is a koshka; a male is a kot. I'm not sure whether this one is a koshka or a kot.

Speaking of my apartment building: When you enter from the street and get into the stairwell, there are stairs that go down one level -- and stairs that go up several floors (four, I think; I'm on the third floor).

There's one apartment on the basement level. It's always dark or dimly lit down there. But the other day, the light was on enough for me to make out a sign. I like to sound out the Russian. It's like a word: You painstakingly get your mouth around the sound of each letter, only to realize that it's a word you know -- like progress [прогресс: the п is a P sound; the р is an R; the г is a hard G; the с is an S], or macaroni [макароны: the н is an N sound].

Here's what the sign outside the basement apartment says:



Did you figure out the translation? It's a School of Astrology!

Ш = sh
к = k
о = o
л = l
а = a

(So, "shkola" or school.)

а = a
с = s
т = t
р = r
о = o
л = l
о = o
г = g
и = ee
и = ee

(So, "astrologeeee")