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).