The Big Bloginksi

One last workshop ... in Zaporizhzhya

2007-07-06T23:59:00.000+03:00

I did a workshop today in Zaporizhzhya, in southern Ukraine. We met with a group of enthusiastic journalists at the Media Center attached to the Alex TV Co. We spent the day covering computer-assisted reporting (Internet search and spreadsheet skills) and "Web 2.0" publishing. I created a temporary blog -- sorry, it's been deleted -- to which everyone posted content (including embedded video from YouTube or a poll from BlogPoll).

After the workshop, we had fun taking pictures:

Now, Lorenza and I are off to Crimea to do some hiking and swimming.

Ego alerts, in Russian

2007-06-23T15:35:00.001+03:00

In my workshops on advanced Internet search techniques, I urge reporters to create "Google Alerts" on relevant subjects. I wrote about this strategy in an article that will be in Quill, the magazine of the Society of Professional Journalists:

Most of us use Google by typing words and phrases into a box and clicking the search button. But you can also play fetch with Google Alerts [www.google.com/alerts]: You can tell Google to constantly search the Web, news sites, blogs and/or discussion boards for keywords – and then to e-mail you the results. You can receive the links as soon as Google finds them or bundled daily or weekly.

Google Alerts can be a godsend for journalists tracking specific topics. You can use all the search commands supported by Google: searching for phrases or synonyms, for example, or restricting searches to specific domains, Web sites, news sources or geographic locations. (For a list of these search operators, see www.googleguide.com/advanced_operators_reference.html.)

So, if I were covering mining for a Virginia newspaper, I might set up a Google Alert with these parameters: mining +safety (location:va OR site:gov)

This means Google would search for mining or related words (mines or miners) and the word safety; it would look for information located either in Virginia or on government Web servers; it would search the Web, blogs, Google News and Google Groups; and it would e-mail me a compilation of results once a day.

At the very least, you might want to set up an “ego alert” – to see if people are talking about you or reprinting your bylined stories on the Internet.

[Me again, not quoting from Quill:] I've got an "ego alert" set up for "Jeff South" (and variations on my name) + VCU or variations of VCU, and/or "professor". The results go once a week to my Gmail account.

But that ego alert works only for references in the Roman alphabet. What about references to the Russian spelling of my name -- Джеф Саус? So I've set up a Cyrillic ego alert. Here are the hits so far:

http://www.zaxid.net/newsua/2007/6/12/105822/

http://www.zik.com.ua/index.php?news_id=87669

http://www.poralviv.org/pages/view/general-about-membership

http://atn.kharkov.ua/mess.php?id=18213

http://www.pr.ua/news.php?new=3926

Back from Lviv, Ukraine's 'most European' city

2007-06-15T23:11:00.000+03:00

I just returned from a rocket trip to Lviv (that's the Ukrainian spelling; it's Lvov in Russian -- but Russian is disdained there). Lviv is the heart of the Ukrainian nationalist movement -- and somewhat chauvinistic about Ukrainian culture and about itself. And it should be: Lviv is a pretty city, more like Italy than like Kharkiv -- with historic buildings, sidewalk cafes, winding streets. The central district is on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Last September, Lviv celebrated its 750th anniversary. I got the impression, too, that Lviv wasn't decimated by World War II as other cities. (For example, 75 percent of Kharkiv was destroyed during the Great Patriotic War.)

Lviv looks to Poland (of which it once was part) and to Western Europe just as Kharkiv looks to Russia. To some extent, the two cities reflect the geographical split in Ukrainian politics.

I went to Lviv to do a series of technology workshops for journalists. Yulia came to serve as a translator and co-trainer -- plus, she got to see a good friend who lives in Lviv.

We left Kharkiv early Wednesday morning (7 a.m.); took a train to Kiev, then another train to Lviv, arriving around 1 a.m. Thursday. We crashed at a hotel (Yulia's friend, Olena, met us there and shared Yulia's room so they could catch up). Then, early Thursday, we had breakfast and took a taxi to the workshop.

The workshops were held in a conference room in the Lviv office of ПОРА! (pronounced "PORA"), a pro-democracy group. Here's what Wikipedia says about the group:

Pora! (Ukrainian: ПОРА!), meaning IT'S TIME! in Ukrainian, is a civic youth organization in Ukraine espousing nonviolent resistance and advocating increased national democracy, in opposition to what they claimed was the authoritarian governing style of Ukraine's president Leonid Kuchma.

The group was established in 2004 to coordinate young people's opposition to the Kuchma government. Pora! was inspired and partly trained by members of the Serbian Otpor movement which helped bring down President Slobodan Milošević, and is also allied to related movements throughout Eastern Europe, including Kmara in the republic of Georgia (itself partly responsible for the downfall of President Eduard Shevardnadze), Zubr in Belarus (opposing President Alexander Lukashenko), Oborona in Russia, and MJAFT! in Albania. ...

Yulia and I felt a bit awkward doing our workshops under the auspices of a political organization, but if that's who opened the doors to us, who were we to complain?

Nine journalists (from newspapers, radio, TV and online media, as well as from the Lviv City Hall press agency) attended the workshops, and a few more drifted in and out. We covered Internet searching, spreadsheets and Web 2.0 publishing. Among other things, we divided the participants into teams and had them do a Web scavenger hunt:

We wrapped up around 4:30 and then did a little sightseeing. The City Hall folks gave us a VIP tour of the bell tower that's part of the City Hall complex. The view from the top was impressive. You could see churches like the one at the top of this post. And the tower looked down on the old market square:

We were under the bell when it went GONG! at 5 p.m. According to tradition, you're supposed to stand under the bell (it's a good idea to cover your ears!) and make a wish. [So Lorenza, if you're reading this, guess what I wished for?]

You'll find more pictures from my trip to Lviv here.

After having dinner at a terrific sidewalk restaurant, Yulia and I walked to the train station and caught the 11 p.m. train to Kiev. It arrived around 7:30 a.m. We had tickets for an 11:30 a.m. bus to Kharkiv. To kill time, we took a taxi to downtown Kiev (the driver was a talkative guy who met, and went drinking with, American soldiers in Germany; he had pretty strong conspiracy theory about the Kennedy assassination). I did some souvenir shopping. Then we caught the Kiev Metro back to the train station and got on our bus.

The bus unfortunately had an accident about an hour into our trip -- it wasn't our bus driver's fault: Somebody cut him off and he bumped another car. Nobody was hurt, but the police had to be called and paperwork had to be filled out before we could resume on our way.

As a result, we didn't get back to Kharkiv until almost 7:30. The silver lining: Yulia thought we'd arrive at 6:45; I bet on 7:30. The loser had to teach the winner three new words in the loser's native language. So ... I continue to build my Russian vocabulary, thanks to the bus accident.

Kharkiv turns on its fountains

2007-06-12T13:51:00.000+03:00

Like many European cities, Kharkiv has a lot of fountains -- and several nice ones in Shevchenko Park, near my apartment. As the weather turned warm, the city turned on the fountains. They're refreshing during my run -- which I end with a loop through the park.

The fountain above is in the middle of the park; it's a popular spot for people to have their picture taken.

Here's a photo of a fountain at the back of the park. This one has water cascading down toward the main road below. (Sadly, graffiti is as common here as in the U.S.)

And finally, here's a fountain in front of the Opera House.

Happy Birthday, Slobids'kyj Krai

2007-06-08T22:02:00.000+03:00

This afternoon, Yulia and I represented the Journalists' Initiative Association at a celebration of the 90th anniversary of the Slobids'kyj Krai newspaper. This is the official oblast government newspaper, and the oblast threw a big party. It was held at the Cultural Center at Karazin National University and featured local celebrities, government officials, singers, dancers, performers and a lot of food and drink.

We gave Volodimir Revenko, the paper's editor, a couple of books: one about journalism (something I picked up from the Knight program about international news reporting), and the other about advertising (by the legendary U.S. ad executive David Ogilvy; I found a Russian translation at a Kharkiv bookstore).

Here are a few pictures; you'll find more in my Picasa album.

Something in the air -- pollen!

2007-06-03T22:07:00.000+03:00

For a big city, Kharkiv has a lot of trees -- especially poplar trees (топол in Russian). For the past three weeks, those trees have been giving off cotton-like tufts of pollen. People call it пох (I think; they might be saying пах). It's everywhere: in the air, on the ground ... When I go running, it gets into my mouth.

Fortunately, we've had a little rain, and that keeps the stuff from floating in the air so much.

Journalism pep talk

2007-06-01T15:21:00.000+03:00

I visited a school last week -- a progressive private school founded and run by a friend of Serge's. It's called OChAG School. I talked to the students about journalism, the U.S. and other things. And, of course, I took a few pictures. Here's one of the 10th-form students (equivalent to our high school juniors):

And here's a photo of a 9th-form class:

Scenes from Izyum

2007-05-29T14:32:00.000+03:00

Here are some photos from last week's trip to Izyum. First, a picture of some of the editors who participated in the workshop:

Izyum is a medium-size city (50,000 pop.) with a nice river and a lot of recreational activities (hunting and fishing -- Virginia's bubbas would feel right at home). Here's the river ...

... which is spanned by a footbridge.

The commercial area is tidy and has a friendly, small-town feel. Here's a photo of a local church:

A visit to the dentist (стоматолог)

2007-05-26T13:49:00.000+03:00

A while ago, I chipped a front tooth, and I figured I might as well have it repaired here. Yulia has a good dentist -- she fixed a problem Selma had -- so we made an appointment.

The dental office was set up like a hair styling shop -- an open room with two dental chairs. No hygienists here; the person who works on your teeth is an actual dentist. (This will be a shock to many Americans. In Richmond, I get the feeling that my dentist is more like the honcho real estate broker who has agents doing the grunt but drops by at the end of the process to sign a piece of paper and collect a hefty fee.)

Dr. Lihochas worked on my tooth for about an hour -- it looks and feels great now. The cost: 70 grivni, or $13.84. That's about the price of two tickets to see Michael Moore's "Sicko."

Ukraine at Eurovision: What a drag?

2007-05-24T15:46:00.000+03:00

During the Web 2.0 program for Izyum, participants will learn how to embed various online modules (polls from UA Poll Zone, PowerPoint shows from SlideShare and video from YouTube) into their Web sites or blogs. I was looking for a YouTube clip that would catch my audience's eyes, and settled on a much-viewed segment about Ukraine's entry in the recent Eurovision 2007 Song Contest.

Here's what the BBC reported under the headline "Eurovision act angers Ukrainians":

Angry Ukrainian nationalists have held protests against the selection of a controversial drag queen to represent Ukraine in the Eurovision Song Contest.

The demonstrations are part of a campaign to pressure the former Soviet republic to withdraw from the contest.

Verka Serdyuchka, who pokes fun at middle-aged women, is loved by many people and is a cult icon in Ukraine.

She was chosen as Ukraine's entry by an overwhelming majority in a public vote, but some find her vulgar and offensive. ...

View Serdyuchka's performance and decide for yourself whether it's fun or offensive:

Zooming to Izyum, for Web 2.0 training

2007-05-23T11:35:00.000+03:00

I am getting ready to give a workshop on Friday in Izyum, about two and a half hours by bus from Kharkiv. The workshop is for the Новини Ізюмщини (Izyum News) newspaper. I plan to cover advanced Internet research skills, introductory spreadsheet skills and a new module I've developed about "Web 2.0" -- fast and free ways to make news Web sites more engaging and interactive.

In the new program, I'll show reporters how to set up blogs, add "insta-polls" and post multimedia content (video, slide shows and so forth).

In prepping for the Web 2.0 training, I'm using Google's Russian-language interface -- because that's what we'll use on Friday. It looks and feels just like the English-language version.

My plan is to have each participant create a blog and populate it with content: perhaps the summary of a news article that the participant has written (with a link to the full article), and maybe a poll.

There are several online tools that will create a poll for you and let you embed it in your own Web site. These tools ask you the question and options that you want in your poll, then spit out some code that you can paste on your Web page -- the same technique that YouTube and SlideShare use.

Here's a poll I just created using a tool called BlogPoll.

Boiko kids beamed with pride ...

2007-05-22T22:31:00.000+03:00

... as they distributed Issue #2 of their newpaper, Boiko's Eyes. Yulia and I delivered the copies (200 of the Russian version, 100 of the English version) this afternoon. Then the students raced around the halls and went classroom to classroom, handing copies to students and teachers.

We took some last staff photos. Here's one; you'll find others in a Picasa Web album.

The Boiko School posted Issue #1 on its Web site, and we hope they'll do the same with Issue #2. To find PDFs of the first issue, go to www.boiko.com.ua, and scroll down until you see (on the right-hand side):

Внимание! Внимание! У нас теперь своя газета!
Русская версия>> / Английская версия>>

Or try Google's English-language translation of that page.

Extra! Extra! Students publish 2nd newspaper!

2007-05-22T11:58:00.001+03:00

At the Boiko School on Friday, we settled on a lineup of stories for the second issue of the student newspaper (the last issue for this school year). We also discussed which stories should go where:

* Front page: a preview of the "Last Call" musical performance (a show the students put on near the end of each school year) and coverage of the Victory Day observation

* Back page: a feature about the Boiko summer camp, a report from a party featuring a famous Russian DJ and an article about the Boiko kindergarten's fifth birthday party.

Over the weekend, the Boiko students sent me the final drafts of their stories -- in both Russian and English. Yulia and I copy-edited the articles, I did the layout, we proofed the pages and then we took them to the photocopy shop.

This afternoon, we will deliver to Boiko 200 copies of the Russian edition and 100 copies of the English edition. Here's what they look like. If you see any mistakes, keep them to yourself; I don't want to know. ;)

If you want a copy of the newsletter, e-mail me and I can send you a PDF.

Saturday at the zoo

2007-05-19T23:41:00.000+03:00

Yesterday afternoon, I went to the Boiko School, where the students were pulling together the stories for the final edition of their newspaper. Some of the students mentioned that today (Saturday), Boiko would be celebrating the fifth birthday of its kindergarten program -- and that the festivities would be held at the Kharkiv Zoo. We agreed that this would make a timely story for the newspaper. One student (Paulina) offered to cover the story; I said I'd take pictures. And that's why you're seeing this:

I also took several pictures of non-human animals, this being a zoo after all. It's kind of a sad-looking zoo: Mmany of the animals clearly have seen better days; they looked hot and uncomfortable. The polar bear cooled off in the moat inside his caged area:

Several of the animals had had babies. Here's a baby brown bear, which was being swatted around from time to time by its mother, trying to show who's boss:

The zoo also has a lot of ostriches, which I see all the time, because their pen is along the fence that I pass by almost every day.

Back from Kherson with pet calendar photos

2007-05-18T19:59:00.000+03:00

Kherson is a nice city -- it's on the Dniper River (which we saw) and the Black Sea (which we didn't). It seems that whenever I had my camera handy, there were animals nearby. Here's a cat on a window sill. Its shadow and black stripe make it appear as if it's being hugged by another cat:

And here is a photo of a dog -- a member of a friendly pack of pooches that roamed the central square begging for food from customers eating at outdoor restaurants:

Of course, my purpose for going to Kherson wasn't to photograph animals. Rather, Yulia and I conducted several workshops:

* A computer-assisted reporting workshop for upper-level journalism students at Kherson State University. The facilities were a bit cramped -- four computers in a small room, with two students at each computer. But we covered a lot of ground on Internet searching and spreadsheets -- skills the students don't usually get.

* A civic journalism workshop for first-year journalism students at KSU. We covered not only the principles of CJ but also interviewing skills and lead-writing. We had 17 students, and they were great -- in many ways, far more advanced than my students at VCU.

* Two two-hour "mini workshops" -- compressed versions of the material above -- for the staff at the Новый День (New Day) newspaper. The newspaper sponsors the Kherson Press Club, which is where we met. We had eight journalists present, including two from a sister newspaper called The Keys.

Here is a photo of the university students:

Off to Kherson, on the Black Sea

2007-05-14T21:33:00.000+03:00

I am heading to Kherson, a 16-hour train ride south of Kharkiv, to do workshops for two groups: the journalism students at Kherson State University, and the staff of the Новый День (New Day) newspaper.

For both of those audiences, I'll do a workshop on computer-assisted reporting. I've updated the printed and online resources that I'll use for this training and translated the workshop home page into Russian. (This will allow us to move faster, because the participants can click on links instead of typing Web addresses into their browser.)

For the journalism students, I'll also do a workshop on civic journalism. It's the first time we've presented this material since Selma returned to the States. Yulia will be assuming more of a training role as well as a translator role -- so I'm sure it will go well. The only thing I'm not particularly looking forward to is ... 16 hours on a train!

I plan to take pictures and post them when I return, so check back.

Audio slideshow of fireworks

2007-05-10T10:17:00.000+03:00

I have been experimenting with different ways for news organizations to present photos. Here's a presentation that includes audio. I did it with a program called SoundSlides -- and it took just 10 minutes. (It took more time to upload than it did to create the slideshow ;)

After the Kharkiv fireworks, of course, everyone broke into singing "The Star-Spangled Banner." Oops, wrong country. OK, so they didn't sing. But I took the fireworks photos, grabbed excerpts of a couple of songs (the first one by Prince, the second by Korol' i Shut, or the King and the Joker, a Russian punk-rock band) and created a 2-minute slideshow.

I can't upload my SoundSlides project to my blog, but if you click here, you can see it. (Be sure to click on the arrow above the word 'Small' to start the show.)

Victory Day fireworks over Kharkiv

2007-05-10T01:09:00.000+03:00

Today was Victory Day for Russia and other former Soviet nations, the 62nd anniversary of the victory over the Nazis in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 (as World War II is known here).

There were parades and concerts -- and in Kharkiv, a magnificent fireworks display. Serge and I went; it was on Freedom Square, just a five-minute walk from our apartment building.

The fireworks were supposed to begin at 10 p.m. They were about a half-hour late -- but well worth the wait. It was the most spectacular show I'd seen -- better than Fourth of July fireworks over Town Lake in Austin or an Innsbrook in Richmond.

The fireworks started low on the ground, near the Lenin statue -- and I thought, "OK, that's quaint." But then they rose higher and higher -- they could've shot down a couple of planes! -- and ended with a wild finale of colorful bursts.
Of course, pictures -- not words -- are needed to convey fireworks. But I want to present the pictures in a different way than usual.

I recently learned about a site called Slideshare that makes it easy to upload a PowerPoint presentation and then share it with other people. One way to share the file is to embed a link in a Web page (as YouTube lets you do). This interests me a lot, because journalists -- especially citizen journalists -- might be able to use this tool for presenting news photos.

So, with that explanation, here is my slideshow of the fireworks display:

Svyatogorsk lavra & monastery

2007-05-01T12:21:00.000+03:00

Yesterday, I went to a mountainside monastery with my friend and landlord Serge, his friend Sveta and her younger daughter Marina. The monastery is called Svyatogorsk, and it includes a lavra (a series of caves), though we didn't get to see that part. What we did see, however, was beautiful: various connected churches and meditation buildings along the Donest River, about a two-hour drive south of Kharkiv.

I couldn't find much online information in English about the monastery. But Serge sent me this link to a Russian-language Web site; and here's the Google translation.

Also in this area is a huge cubist statue dedicated to a 1917 revolutionary hero. (That might have been a not-so-subtle message from the Soviet government about religion: The statue is on a hill overlooking the monastery.)

I have more photos in a Picassa Web album.

The walk up the mountain to the monastery was pretty steep and long (I'm guessing about 5 km). That didn't dissuade a lot of Ukrainian women from wearing spiked heels.

The power of the tilde ( ~ )

2007-04-29T13:35:00.000+03:00

Yulia and I did a workshop yesterday for journalists at a Kharkiv television news operation, ATN. The station has a new newsroom, and I sensed a lot of energy and commitment. I covered advanced Internet search techniques (aka "stupid Google pet tricks") and introductory Excel skills.

Most of the Google strategies were skills I had covered before -- they're listed on a handout I've posted online. Things like: Put phrases you're searching for in quotes; if you're looking for an exact match on a word or phrase, put a plus sign (+) next to it; if you want to search a specific domain, use "site:", followed by a snippet of the Web address (like "gov.ua" for Ukrainian government sites).

But in preparing for the workshop, I discovered an undocumented Google tips -- one of those oddities that makes software users wonder: Is it a feature or a flaw? It's hard to describe, but here goes:

In Google's English-language interface, if you precede a search term with a tilde (the technical term, of course, is "a squiggly"!), Google will look for synonyms to that term. Example: If I search for ...

... I get hits for newspaper, media and related terms. (Likewise, if you search for "~food", you get hits for terms like cooking, recipes and nutrition.) It's a cool way to do a "fuzzy" search -- to broaden your search but still keep it focused.

This works in English; I guess Google has created (or taps into) a database of synonymistic (that's probably not a word) terms.

Yulia and I tried this in Russian, and it doesn't work the same way; it doesn't search for synonyms of the word you're looking for. (My guess is, Google doesn't have the synonymistic database for other languages.)

However, Google does something else with the tilde-tagged words in Russian searches: It gives you spelling variations based on that word -- and this can be crucial for languages like Russian (in which the same word has different spellings depending on its case -- the way it's used in a sentence: as a subject, as an object, as the object of a preposition, etc.).

So check this out:

If I search for one variation of the spelling of Kharkiv (Харькова; the variation you might you if you said, "This is a Kharkiv map"), and you put a plus sign next to Kharkiv (meaning you want an exact match), here's what you get:

But if I change the + to a ~ (meaning I want a fuzzy search), I get:

That's about 1 million more hits. As I browse them, I see that Google has returned pages with such alternative spellings as Харькове, харьковского, Харьковский.

Another example: Suppose you're doing research about whether computer games have led people to commit suicide.

If you search for exact matches on the two key words (+самоубийство +компьютеры), you get 170,000 hits in Google. If you "fuzzy up" the search (another highly technical term) by changing your syntax to "~самоубийство ~компьютеры", you get 1.1 million hits -- because Google will return Web pages that have the word computer as singular or plural, as a noun or an adjective, as a subject or an object ... all the myriad possibilities.

Any ideas about what Google is doing? This trick doesn't always seem to work. It seems to work best with long words. Any Google experts out there?

Trade Information Center -- Ukraine-Bulgaria

2007-04-27T20:16:00.000+03:00

A new office opened on the ground floor of my apartment building, and the above sign went up. It says: "Trade Information Center -- Ukraine-Bulgaria." I'm posting this for the only Bulgarian I know -- Gergana Bobeva, a journalism student at VCU.

(Then again, this could be a money-laundering operation -- to disguise the source of ill-begotten currency, as my landlord, Serge, jokingly says could be true of a lot of businesses here. ;-)

The tragedy at Virginia Tech

2007-04-26T23:01:00.000+02:00

Like most of the world, I was shocked by the shooting rampage at Virginia Tech in my home state. I hadn't blogged about it because the carnage left me speechless. What was going through Seung-Hui Cho's mind? How could somebody be so consumed by hate? What other factors, if any, contributed to the deaths of 32 innocent victims?

I don't have answers to those questions -- even though, as a reporter and editor, I've helped covered a lot of mass violence. At the Austin American-Statesman, I helped coordinate coverage of "the Luby's massacre" in Killeen, Texas in 1991: In that incident, George Hennard drove his pickup truck into a Luby's Cafeteria, shot and killed 23 people, wounded 20 others and then committed suicide. The Luby's massacre was the deadliest criminal mass shooting in U.S. history until the April 16 slaughter at Virginia Tech.

Writing can be therapeutic and often enlightening. So I invited some of the journalism students whom I've met in Ukraine to write commentary on the Virginia Tech shootings. Maria Kirsanova, a journalism student at Mariupol State University of Humanities, took me up on the offer.

Today, the Commonwealth Times -- the student newspaper at VCU -- printed Maria's guest column. Here's the link. The URL is unwieldy, so I've "snipped" it to "http://snipurl.com/kirsanova" if you want to share it.

The top of Maria's column:

The shootings at Virginia Tech are appalling and make one wonder: Why is that kind of tragedy not uncommon in the U.S.?

The media tend to focus on the availability of military-style weapons. However, as far as I am concerned, a mentally disturbed teenager bent on committing murder will find a way to do it, whether a legal gun is easily available or not. ...

Maria then goes on to discuss other factors that contribute to a violent society, and she ends with this controversial statement:

Трудно сказать точно, что так сильно влияет на поведение учащихся в Соединенных Штатах: телевидение, компьютеры, доступное оружие или что-то ещё. Да и вряд ли от этого на сто процентов застрахованы люди в других странах. Ещё труднее сказать, что может сделать правительство Америки, чтобы предотвратить такие трагедии в будущем. Да и стоит ли удивляться, что подростки решают свои проблемы при помощи оружия, когда своих внешнеполитических целей правительство страны достигает путем войн?

Oh, you don't read Russian? Well, check out the English translation in the CT!

For the record, I think Maria's assertion that intolerance contributed to Cho's rampage is incomplete. I'd argue that school officials were too tolerant with his anti-social behavior. This was a "student" who signed the class rolls with a question mark, repeatedly harassed other students, stopped coming to class ... but it seems that no one intervened in a forceful way. Perhaps privacy laws and other rules prevented such intervention.

At VCU, I also have seen instances of university officials' tolerating conduct that goes beyond rude and verges on criminal. Last semester, a student sent me an e-mail that began with the F-word, ended with "P.S. I hate you" and in between pleaded for a higher grade (probably not the most effective appeal in history). The student also contacted the VCU president's office, triggering a flurry of messages from administrators who asked me to try to "help" the young man. (The administrators dropped that request when I alerted them to the student's profanity-laced e-mail and explained that there was no justification for raising the student's grade. But, so far as I could tell, VCU never took action against the student; the student certainly never apologized.)

I'm not suggesting that the VCU student described above will go beserk as Cho did. But as some point, maybe we need to recognize these behaviors as "cries for help" -- or at least cries to protect society.

I don't mean for any of this discussion to excuse Cho or to detract from his culpability. He alone bears responsibility for the mass murders at Virginia Tech. But maybe we can find ways to prevent future Chos.

David vs. Goliath: the SWOT Analysis

2007-04-25T10:58:00.000+02:00

The past three days, the Journalists' Initiative Association conducted a workshop on "social advertising" -- public service campaigns. Not exactly journalism, but the funding came from the World Bank (Russian has the same saying as English: "Never look a gift horse -- or an NGO with deep pockets -- in the mouth"). Plus, it was for a good cause: to get Ukrainians to drink more vodka. Ha, ha. Actually, to discourage young people in Kharkiv from smoking and drinking.

The need for such a campaign is obvious. Outside schools, you'll see students -- I'm not even sure they're teenagers yet -- smoking during breaks. It's not just boys: Smoking rates among girls here are much higher than in the United States. And if you walk along Lenin Prospect or through Shevchenko Park, you'll see masses of young people, especially guys, clutching and swigging from dark bottles of beer at all hours of the day. The Breakfast of Champions.

So I didn't mind getting roped into the workshop. I've got a little background on advertising: I give it a glancing blow in some of my courses (Media Ethics, Comm Tech & Global Soc), and I'm surrounded by incredibly smart and creative advertising faculty members. Plus, if your title includes the word "professor," more people automatically believe what you say. It's like being the Scarecrow in "The Wizard of Oz" after he gets his diploma. In fact, when I use the title "associate professor," I have an average of 27.4 percent more credibility than when I use the title "journalist." This would increase to 39.2 percent if I ever scam my way to a full professorship, statistics show.

In my parts of the workshop, I talked about creativity, the different appeals that ads make, target groups and focus groups, integrated marketing communications, and ethics in advertising (with the self-deprecating, albeit stale line, "Given the topic, a lot of people probably think this will be the shortest lecture in history").

The audience was a group of citizens who have a grant to launch the anti-smoking, anti-drinking campaign. Angelina Soldatenko, who coordinated the training for the JIA, gave a tireless performance about campaign strategy, PR, marketing and such. We videotaped and critiqued each participant doing a television interview, and we also had the group practice holding press conferences.

The participants did a SWOT Analysis -- identifying their Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (which in Russian would be "Сильных и слабых сторон, возможностей и угроз Анализ," but Сссву Analysis doesn't have the same ring). I walked the group through a quick exercise: What if David did a SWOT Analysis before confronting Goliath? The participants came up with things like ...

Strengths (besides the slingshot): Belief in victory; confidence; having God on his side

Threats: Goliath, aka Philip Morris (which I can get away with, since I hail from PM's home town)

Anyway, I think you can see where I was headed: that the local campaign will be more like a guerrilla (advertising) war, but "you folks are on the right side, the moral side, the ethical side." And I warned that you don't want to blow your advantage by doing something dumb or unethical, like lighting up a cigarette at the end of your anti-smoking press conference. (Hey, you didn't see David toking on a victory cigar after taking out the Big Guy. But blunders happen: Zinedine Zidane, France's head-butting soccer legend and spokesman for the European Union's "stub it out" anti-smoking campaign, was caught smoking a cigarette after last year's World Cup. The story was headlined: "He shoots, he scores, he lights another fag…")

Then I launched into taste and decency and -- let's go to the videotape ... What do you think of this commercial Ford is running in the UK?

http://dl.net.hr/webcafe/filmici/evil_twin_cat.mpg

Shockvertising occurs in PSAs, too -- like this commercial against domestic violence that got pulled in Canada [Warning: This is pretty graphic, so keep your cursor on the Stop button and bail if it's too much]:

I also showed an ad by the U.N. Mine Action Service that showed kids at a typical American soccer game getting blown up. (The tagline: "If there were land mines here, would you stand for them anywhere?") U.S. television stations refused to run the commercial. A guy at the social-advertising workshop -- a former police officer -- said he'd like to take the ad's creator out in the country and ... never mind. It's a disturbing ad, and it elicits disturbing responses.

I showed a variety of print advertisements, too -- some that probably crossed the line, some that were close, and some that were tasteful and thoughtful (though maybe a little too clever). Here are some examples:

Whether I managed to say anything intelligent or insightful about the above ads is anybody's guess. I may have just sounded profound because of the professorial aura. I sometimes feel like an impostor when I do presentations like this. It's small wonder: If you delve into etymology, you'll find that "professor" and "impostor" both emanate from the same Greek root -- actually, dating back to Aramaic times. You can look it up yourself ...

Boiko Eyes, Issue #1!

2007-04-20T21:24:00.000+02:00

It took longer than we expected -- we had to overcome a flu epidemic, a school quarantine, a lot of skepticism and other obstacles -- but today, we finally distributed the first issue of "Boiko's Eyes." This was the project that Selma and I started back in February. The final product was a simple newsletter. The front page is above, and here's the second page:

We also published the newsletter in Russian. The students turned in both English and Russian versions of their stories. Selma and I edited the English versions; Yulia helped tremendously with the Russian copy. (And Yulia helped with the headlines, because puns like "Boiko students get their kicks playing sports" doesn't translate.)

The students who worked on the paper seemed happy -- and their schoolmates snatched up copies. (I printed 200 -- half in Russian and half in English.) The school administrators also seemed pleased.

Where do we go from here? At the staff meeting today, the students agreed to publish one more issue before school lets out for the summer. Our plan is to distribute the paper on May 21 -- but to do that, the students will have to submit their stories by May 7. That's a tight deadline; there's a weeklong "worker's rights" holiday beginning May 1. I hope the success of this first issue will motivate students to work hard on Issue #2.

(And yes, when I designed "Babushka's Bugle," I used the same template as I did for "Boiko's Eyes." Hey, if it ain't broke, don't fix it! For Boiko, I layed out the English version first, and then flowed the Russian copy into the same space. One thing I discovered: Russian takes up about 20% more room than English -- the words are longer, or you often need two Russian words to express one English word. So I had to use a smaller font to accommodate the Russian text.)

And then there was one

2007-04-18T22:28:00.000+02:00

We had a going-away party for Selma today. Tomorrow, she is going to Kiev, where she'll spend two nights at a friend's apartment and then take a Saturday-morning flight back to the U.S. (It's the same flight Lorenza took last weekend.)

The party was held at the JIA office, with Aleksey and Angelina Soldatenka, our translator Yulia, the office manager (Tatiana), and Selma and me. The Soldatenkos broke out some cognac and champagne, and everyone made multiple toasts. We gave Selma a set of traditional tea napkins; she gave presents to us, too -- I got a handful of tokens for the Kharkiv metro system.

I gave Selma what is a tradition when an important editor or reporter leaves a newspaper: a mock front page devoted to the departing journalist. It's the newspaper equivalent of a roast -- funny, sometimes a bit crude. I called this spoof paper "Babushka's Bugle." The picture you see above is probably too small to read, and many of the jokes are insider, "you had to be there" jokes. But here's the lead story:

As Williams departs, a nation mourns

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. These are the times that try men’s souls and women’s soles. I once had a dream about such times … Oy vey! My editor, who just came back from a journalism workshop, is trying to tell me something: “Write for the reader!” хорошо [OK]; as any fool can see, the sad news I am illuminating is this:

The legendary American journalist Selma Williams is leaving Ukraine this week, triggering an outpouring of grief and gratitude from our proud nation.

The government has declared a 30-day period of mourning, during which newspapers are forbidden to use poetry in the leads of their stories.

If Mrs. Williams’ departure has a silver lining, it is this: It has united President Viktor Yushchenko, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych and Princess Yulia Tymoshenko, as well as the communists, the socialists, the capitalists, the subbotniks, the druids and the 251 other political parties.

Ukrainians of all political stripes have agreed to put aside their differences and work together to persuade Mrs. Williams to return to Ukraine. They have offered her unlimited cookies and tea for lunch for every day she spends in Ukraine.

The Verkhovna Rada passed a law thanking Mrs. Williams for training journalists in Ukraine and for buying enough train tickets to keep the transportation system solvent. Under the new law, Mrs. Williams can ride for free on any overnight train, as long as she sleeps in a top bunk.

Neighboring Russia greeted Mrs. Williams’ departure with dread. President Vladimir Putin closed his country’s borders to prevent the U.S. trainer from helping Russian media.

Clearly, Mrs. Williams’ departure has caused the greatest consternation in the Ukrainian Reality since the Orange Revolution. As I wrote earlier, these are indeed trying times.

– Andreyevsky Spuf

The story on the lower half of the page showed the reaction of various people to Selma's departure. For example:

Borat Sagdiyev: With Selma safely corseted back in U.S. and A., my sister is again sexiest bitch in glorious former U.S.S. and R.

We're all going to miss Selma a lot -- both for her professional skills and her optimism and good humor. She's a terrific colleague, and Ukraine won't be the same without her.

R&R is over ;-(

2007-04-15T09:56:00.000+02:00

Lorenza (pictured above at one of the Kharkiv markets) returned to Richmond yesterday. [Insert sounds of weeping and anguish here.] She departed in typical whirlwind-Ukrainian fashion:

On Friday night, we went out to dinner with my friend (and landlord and downstairs neighbor) Sergey, and his friend Sveta, and her daughter, Lana. Sergey has a car -- a roomy Renault -- so we drove to a restaurant away from the center of town. After dinner, we walked around (through Gorky Park) until it was about 11 p.m. Then Sergey drove us to the bus station, so we could catch the 11:30 p.m. bus to Kiev.

This bus stops at Borispol airport before heading into downtown Kiev, which was perfect. Lorenza and I arrived at the airport at around 7:30 a.m. -- in plenty of time for her 11 a.m. flight.

You're not allowed to leave Ukraine unless you've spent a night on a train or a bus. It's the law.

Lo and I hung out in the airport, drinking coffee and talking, until her flight started the customs and boarding procedure around 10 a.m. Then I got a ticket for the return bus to Kharkiv -- which passed through the airport around 11:30 a.m. I hopped on that bus and got back to Kharkiv around 7 p.m. Lorenza arrived in Richmond around 6 p.m. her time, so everybody got home safely.

Patty Duke does Ukraine

2007-04-13T21:17:00.000+02:00

I grew up watching what are now cult classics like the Patty Duke Show, about "identical cousins": the proper and prim Brit, Cathy, and the stereotypical American teenager, Patty. The theme song said in part:

Where Cathy adores a minuet,
The Ballet Russes, and crepe suzette,
Our Patty loves to rock and roll,
A hot dog makes her lose control --
What a wild duet!

This week, while Lorenza was here in Kharkiv, we took in a Ballet Russes -- performed at the local opera house. That was on Wednesday, and it was fun! The performance consisted of four pieces -- some classical ballet and some very modern. Sorry, no photos allowed.

Today (Friday), Lorenza, Selma and I visited the Kharkiv Zoo and then went to a cafe in adjoining Shevchenko Park. At the cafe, I ordered ... crepe suzette. (Then Lo and I came home, listened to rock and roll and ate hot dogs -- ha, ha.)

The park is interesting -- always full of people. A man was playing this traditional Ukrainian instrument:

Some R&R, and L&L

2007-04-09T18:45:00.000+02:00

The first L stands for Lorenza (Marcin), my partner and best friend, who visited me this week so we could enjoy some fabulous [insert second L'ing here]. Lo flew from Richmond to New York to Kiev's Borispol airport, arriving on the morning of April 5. I met her at the airport, and then we took a taxi into Kiev.

We stayed for four days at the Kozatsky Hotel, in the center of the city -- where all the government buildings are. The Kozatsky faces the Maidan, or Independence Square, a plaza that was the scene of Ukraine's 2004 "Orange Revolution": That's when hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians descended on the Maidan to demand that the government throw out the results of a rigged election and hold a fair election (which was won by the current president, Viktor Yushchenko).

I was nervous about staying at the Koz because there's been a lot of political turmoil in Ukraine: The Parliament (called the Verkhovna Rada) has taken away a lot of the president's power, so Yushchenko has retaliated by dissolving the Verkhovna Rada and calling for parliamentary elections in May. I've seen on TV and the Web and in the newspapers stories about demonstrators converging on the Maidan for Orange Revolution Part II, and I was wondering whether the congestion of people would prevent us from getting to the hotel.

Adding to my worries were e-mails like this from the U.S. Embassy in Kiev:

In light of press reports of possible demonstrations in central Kyiv, the Embassy would like to remind Americans to be aware of their security and to avoid large public gatherings and demonstrations. Even demonstrations intended to be peaceful can turn confrontational and possibly escalate into violence. You are therefore urged to avoid the areas of demonstrations if possible, and to exercise caution if within the vicinity of any demonstrations, as well as assess their impact on traffic and transportation. Americans witnessing violent or unusual activities should leave the area and then report any potentially illegal activities to the police or to the Embassy.

But those concerns turned out to be totally unfounded. Yes, there were demonstrations -- and people camped out on the Maidan -- but things were calm and peaceful. As Lorenza said, this demonstration wouldn't have even registered on Latin America's protest meter.

So to everybody who e-mail me and asked about my safety, let me assure you: I'm fine.

Lorenza and I took a lot of long walks around Kiev. I've posted pictures in my Picasa Web Album. Here are some samples -- first from the Great Patriotic War Museum ...

... which also featured dueling "peace tanks":

Kiev's funicular -- a cable car that joins the "upper city" with Podil, the Dnepr flood plain turned residential neighborhood. In the Podil, Lorenza and I visited the National Chernobyl Museum:

This car with the CCCP plates (Сою́з Сове́тских Социалисти́ческих Респу́блик, or Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) is part of a theme restaurant that (to me) had a Dukes of Hazzard feel. Lenin would be spinning in his grave.

Easter in Kiev

2007-04-08T20:33:00.000+02:00

I spent Easter with Lorenza in Kiev. Here are some photos of a pageant -- or some kind of musical performance -- that we saw. It was set up on a stage in front of St. Mikhayil's Monastery of the Golden Domes.

Here's a movie that Lorenza shot:

In Mariupol, feeling like celebrities

2007-04-05T15:18:00.000+02:00

Selma, Yulia and I took a night train to Mariupol, on the Sea of Azov, to conduct workshops for journalism students at Mariupol State University for the Humanities. The university lavished us with such attention that we felt like celebrities. At times, I wondered whether they had confused us with some visiting dignitaries.

We happened to arrive on the 60th birthday of Bogdan Vasilovich, dean of the university's College of Philology (which is what they call liberal arts here). Bogdan is a real Renaissance man -- a poet, a composer and, from all indications, a great guy. So the school organized a concert and party for him. The concert, above, featured various singing groups -- with Bogdan's poems set to music. Faculty members and other people paraded up to the stage and gave Bogdan gifts: a computer, a video camera, enough flowers to stock a florist shop ...

The university officials asked if we wanted to join the party on stage. We demurred, but they arranged spectacular seats in the middle of the concert hall. And after the concert, we were included at a fourchette -- a banquet -- in Bogdan's honor. The table featured caviar, cognac, vodka, all sorts of wonderful dishes. And people gave toast after toast to Bogdan. This time, we had no choice but to join in. (Selma suggested that we sign "Happy Birthday," but in the end, I gave a fairly traditional -- albeit short -- toast.)

The next day (Tuesday), I conducted a workshop on computer-assisted reporting -- advanced tips for searching the Internet and an introduction to spreadsheets and data analysis. After that, we had a meeting with the rector, Kostantin Balabanov (below, with an assistant administrator, Svitlana, who orchestrated our visit, which was "very good, indeed!"):

Then Kostantin and Svitlana held a press conference for us with the local media -- and with students -- asking questions: about the press in Ukraine, the press in the United States ... and about the "certificates of completion" that I promised to give the students who attended our workshop. ("What can we do with the certificates?" a student asked. I answered: "If you have your certificate and 5 grivni, you'll be able to buy a cup of coffee." This joke tends to work better in English.)

The press conference was on Mariupol television that evening and the next morning. Also on the TV news were clips of the Bogdan's birthday bash.

On Wednesday, Selma and I did a workshop on civic journalism. We used the exercise I described earlier -- a skit that compares old-school and new-school journalistic writing. I played the reporter who wrote a flowery story about city budget season; Selma was the curmudgeonly editor who told me to (re)write the article for the readers, not for my ego.

Somewhat as I had feared, about half of the students preferred the "to everything there is a season"-approach to the budget story. Selma and I resisted saying: Wrong answer! But we made a case that readers are better served by the civic journalism style. And at the end of the workshop, we gathered for a group photo:

Privatization, the fortune-cookie view

2007-04-01T11:34:00.000+02:00

Yesterday, we had a roundtable discussion of editors of newspapers that may be privatized over the next few years. During that discussion, I pulled out an old chestnut that I've seen attributed to everyone from JFK to Linda Ellerbee. In fact, Al Gore used it when testifying before Congress a few weeks ago about the "inconvenient truth" of global warming. Gore said:

"As many know, the Chinese expression for 'crisis' consists of two characters side by side. The first symbol means 'danger.' The second symbol means 'opportunity.' I would like to discuss both the danger and the opportunity here today."

The Mandarin Chinese pictograph for "crisis" -- "wei ji" -- is:

I applied the above bromide to the privatization of media, which is indeed a crisis for currently government-owned newspapers and TV and radio stations: They're going to lose their subsidies and their financial security -- and have to find advertising and other revenue sources. That's the danger. The opportunity is: They'll be independent -- they won't have to pull any punches when they report the news -- and that will mean better journalism.

A few editors -- in particular, Ivan Tsygan, editor in chief of Reshetylivs'ky Visnyk -- were intrigued by rhetorical device/analogy.

I have to confess that I gave a rather shorthand version of the "danger + opportunity = crisis" canard. Victor Mair has labeled this a "widespread public misperception" fueled by New Agers. But Gary Feng says "the urban myth has some kernel of truth in it." Benjamin Zimmer has assembled an insightful essay with historical context about the controversy.

The bottom line is that media privatization is indeed both an opportunity and a danger (and a crisis) for Ukrainian editors -- even if the Chinese reference wilts under close inspection. (But if "wei ji" holds up, it does make a better story!)

Spring weather: planting journalistic seeds in Ukrainian soil

2007-03-31T19:43:00.000+02:00

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?

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.

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.

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 ...

2007-03-28T18:18:00.000+02:00

... 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

2007-03-21T21:41:00.000+02:00

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

2007-03-19T12:08:00.000+02:00

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

2007-03-13T19:06:00.000+02:00

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.

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.

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')

2007-03-11T18:52:00.000+02:00

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

2007-03-09T21:30:00.000+02:00

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!

2007-03-08T15:22:00.000+02:00

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

2007-03-05T21:40:00.000+02:00

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

2007-03-03T17:58:00.000+02:00

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?

2007-03-01T20:05:00.000+02:00

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")

Students start to lower the 'BOOM!'

2007-02-22T15:34:00.000+02:00

We met yesterday with an energetic group of students from National University in Kharkiv. They want to publish an independent student newspaper.

We met for about two hours in a conference room at the university, discussing the initial steps: a name (a budding designer named Kate suggested "Boom!", and that won by acclamation); a budget of stories for the first issue; deadlines (next week); and a publication schedule (monthly -- with issue No. 1 coming out by mid-March).

We also discussed what language(s) to publish in. The group agreed that reporters could write in whatever language they want, and that we might publish multiple editions (one in Russian, one in Ukrainian, and one in English for the university's sizable foreign-student population). As I've noted before (and as another news story shows), language is a big issue here -- a litmus test (depending on your point of view) for national pride, or Ukrainian nationalism, or affinity toward Russia. Significantly, the students are going to tackle this issue head-on: One student volunteered to write a story on this topic.

Other stories on the budget: The library has been closed for fire-safety and other facility-related reasons; student government leaders have launched a campaign to inform students of their rights; women have formed a football team; Ukraine's minister of education is speaking at the university; student volunteers are engaged in activities ranging from working with orphans to promoting safe sex; and more!

That's an ambitious lineup of stories. The real test, of course, is to see how many students deliver. We're hoping to get some by Monday. One student is doing a story about what the newspaper is and how it came to be; here she is interviewing Selma after the meeting:

From 'Stalin's Wife' to steroid-popping weightlifters

2007-02-21T22:14:00.000+02:00

Here's a little insight into the culture in Ukraine and in the U.S.:

When I was on the marshrutka heading to Kremenchuk last week, the television in the front of the van was showing two intriguing films -- both Russian. One was a 2006 movie called "Граффити" (translation: "Graffiti). Here's a description:

Set against a background of a pastoral Russia is this rhapsodic human drama of three freedom-loving people. Director Igor Apasyan born in Georgia to an Armenian family is a veteran filmmaker of international acclaim.

The chief of a small town asks a traveling Moscow art student to paint a portrait of the town's leaders on a wall. The student during his stay in the town strikes a friendship with a drunken old man and a septic service truck driver.

As the student begins painting a town resident comes and asks him to draw a picture of his relatives now dead on the wall too. The student complies and soon more and more people show up with photos of people they would like painted. The student finally decides to completely redo the picture.

OK -- I wish I had Googled the movie before I saw it; I would've understood a lot more. Even so, I grasped some of the plot, and the marshrutka passengers seemed to like it.

Then came an equally engaging drama -- two segments from what appeared to be a mini-series called "Stalin's Wife" (in Russian: «Жена Сталина»). The Moscow Times described it this way:

Till Death Do Us Part

He was a vicious dictator. She was just a teenager when they fell in love. An upcoming television series turns Stalin's marriage into a soap opera. ... Josef Stalin is depicted as a passionate lover who missed the October Revolution because he was in bed with his teenage lover, Nadezhda Alliluyeva ... According to the film's version of history, the reason he was absent during the storming of the Winter Palace was because he was in bed with his lover. "The Bolsheviks have taken power -- or haven't," he tells her, as they hear the sound of shooting outside.

The drama was produced and co-directed by Mira Todorovskaya. It is based on a novel called "The Only Woman" by Olga Trifonova, which came out in 2001 and presented a semi-factual account of Stalin and his complicated personal life.

If the films shown en route to Kremenchuk were the cultural high points of the trip, the films shown on the return trip were definitely the cultural low points. In fact, I don't think you can get any lower, any worse, than "Twin Sitters," a 1994 stinker featuring two steroid-inflated weightlifters named Peter and David Paul. (Yes, they're twins. In this movie, they were called the Falcone brothers.)

How stupid was this movie? Here's some dialogue:

Ma Falcone: Well, it's true! Your necks are bigger than your heads.

David Falcone: Ma, that's only because there are no muscles in our heads to exercise.

Ma Falcone: Yeah? Well, what about your brain?

Peter Falcone: Ma, the brain is not a muscle; it's an organ!

David Falcone: And it's a good thing, too. Otherwise, our heads would be so huge, we would fall over!

It gets worse. It was a blessing, I guess, that the movie was dubbed in Russian (and renamed "The Babysitters" -- maybe the translation of the original title didn't make any more sense than the script). Don't believe me? Here's the trailer.

After assaulting us with "Twin Sitters," the marshrutka driver tried to inflict another Peter and David movie on us -- "Too Big." But the passengers rebelled against the Paul Twins Film Fest. Instead, we watched a French movie that wasn't much better. (It did, however, feature a lot less spaghetti being thrown at people.)

One last cultural note: Our translator, Yulia, and her boyfriend went to a rock concert last night. It was held at the Sports Palace in Kharkiv. The headliner group was the King and the Joker (Korol' i Shut) from St. Petersburg, Russia. From what Yulia described, it sounded like "rage rock," in the vein of Insane Clown Posse or Limp Bizkit.

If there's a lesson here, it's that all over the world, the kids are all right.

Training in Kremenchuk

2007-02-18T22:58:00.000+02:00

I can't believe it's been a week since I posted last -- or that I've been in Ukraine for a month now. Time has a way of slipping away, as if we all didn't know that.

Here's how I spent the past week:

Early in the week, we met with a group of journalists who wanted to practice their English -- a good opportunity to talk about news values and the state of journalism in Ukraine. Our "English club" meets again on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, we met with a group of university students who want to start an independent student newspaper. This Wednesday, we'll go to the university for another meeting -- and roll up our sleeves and get started.

On Thursday, we returned to Boiko School to work with teenagers who want to launch a school paper. We settled on a name (Boiko's Eyes -- which sounds even better in Russian); a logo; and a format (bilingual -- Russian and English). We also assigned several stories, which we hope the students will deliver this week.

After the meeting at Boiko, Selma and I dashed to the train station and caught a van (called a marshrutka) to Kremenchuk, a pleasant city (pop. 230,000) between Kharkiv and Kyiv. We checked into a nice little hotel and then, on Friday and Saturday, conducted a workshop on civic journalism for a group of reporters and editors. [Here's a photo-of-the-day Web site for Kremenchuk, which features a three-minute video about the town.]

I'll post more about the workshop later. For the time being, here are a few photos:

Language wars: Another round in Kharkiv

2007-02-11T09:06:00.000+02:00

Here's an AP story from the Kyiv Post about giving Russian equal standing with Ukrainian as the official languages of Kharkiv:

Local court restores special status for Russian language in Ukrainian eastern city

KYIV (AP) - A local appeals court has restored a special status for the Russian language in an eastern city in Ukraine, officials said Wednesday.

The city council in Kharkiv voted in March to make Russian a regional language, allowing it to be used together with Ukrainian in state and public institutions as well as at universities and cultural institutions.

Local prosecutors filed a lawsuit against the decision and won the case in court. But the city council challenged the decision at the local appeals court.

The Constitution adopted by Ukraine following the 1991 Soviet collapse declared Ukrainian as the sole state language, but many Ukrainians, particularly in the east and on the southern Crimean Peninsula, consider Russian to be their native tongue.

Six regional governments and nine city councils in the east and south last year granted Russian special status – decisions that were heavily criticized by President Viktor Yushchenko.

The Party of the Regions, whose leader, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, enjoys strong support in the east and south, campaigned in elections last year on a promise to make Russian a second state language.

The story echoes an observation I made in a previous posting -- that language is a point of controversy in Ukraine. We have the same thing in the U.S., of course; witness the "English Only / Official English" backlash against the use of Spanish.

Starting a student newspaper at Boiko School

2007-02-09T09:27:00.000+02:00

Selma and I spent most of yesterday at the Boiko School, where we are helping students start a student newspaper.

Aleksey Soldatenko at JIA helped us hook up with the school, which (in U.S. terms) serves pre-K through high school. It's a private school based on the pedagogy of Sergei Boiko, who co-founded the school and teaches there (along with his wife, Anna). Aleksander, an assistant principal and teacher, gave us an extensive tour of the school, which has a Montessori-like feel -- a lot of student activities and free expression. We heard and saw kids singing, baking cookies, learning math, geography, law ...

Boiko is big on languages. All of the students learn English (to a level of competency that puts American schools to shame). The school also offers other languages, including Chinese.

After the tour, some cookies (made by the first-graders) and a hearty lunch in the cafeteria, we met with students interested in creating a newspaper. The turnout was standing-room-only (but we suspect that some students were there just to check out the visitors).

Selma led a discussion of why newspapers are important and what the students could do with a paper. Then we brainstormed possible names ("Boiko Eyes" seemed to float to the top) and story ideas.

A half-dozen students volunteered to do stories for the first issue. Our goal is for the students to write the stories and us to edit them by next week; do the layout the following week; and distribute the paper the week after that. We're going to do a bilingual paper -- English and Russian.

When we met Sergei, he told a joke:

Q: What do you call somebody who speaks two languages?
A: Bilingual.

Q: What do you call somebody who speaks many languages?
A: Polyglot.

Q: What do you call somebody who speaks just one language?
A: American! ;-)

A hotel in Kyiv for the budget-minded traveler

2007-02-07T22:50:00.000+02:00

Kyiv is an expensive city: Almost every hotel room is at least $100 a night, and many are $180-200 -- if you want to stay downtown. However, I found a low-cost alternative: the Kooperator Hotel.

It's a three-star hotel a short walk from the opera house and St. Sophia Cathedral. It has hot water, cable TV, a restaurant (and supposedly a workout room and swimming pool, but I never saw those facilities). The cost, including a breakfast buffet: $65 a night.

The hotel is operated by the Union of Consumers Societies of Ukraine. (The union includes regional consumer groups as well as universities, trade schools and some business enterprises.)

The hotel's brochure says (and I quote!):

"The Union's primary goal is to take care of people, whereas the hotel's and its stuff's main objective is to professionally do their job. Therefore, at Kooperator Hotel the highest level of service and homely comfort meet the requirements of the most exacting traveller."

Breakfast was great, in a German kind of way: cold cuts, cheese, hardboiled eggs ... cereal ... a plate of Italian-looking gnocchi or Texas-like chicken-fried steak and mashed potatoes. Local radio was playing in the background -- sprightly tunes interspersed with Fred Flintstone's yabba-dabba-doo! (Morning radio must be the same the world over.)

Here's what breakfast sounded like in the dining hall.

As long as I'm posting audio, here's another clip -- of a military march that was booming over the loudspeakers at the train station as we waited to board the ride home to Kharkiv.

Back from Kiev with photos & audio

2007-02-06T00:27:00.000+02:00

I had a great time touring the city and meeting with journalists to learn more about the media environment. I'll post details later, but here are a few pictures. (You can find more on my Web album.)

This is the St. Sophia Cathedral, built in the 11th Century. It's a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Kyiv is a city of monuments to writers, poets and other cultural figures:

Down the street from St. Sophia is Mykhailivska Square -- the reconstruction of St. Michael's Golden Domed Cathedral. (The original was destroyed during the atheism campaigns of the 1930s.) The walls of St. Michael's feature vivid pictures:

Also on Mykhailivska Square is a memorial to millions of Ukrainians who were "victims of the famine-genocide of 1932-33."

Off to Kiev (or Kyiv), Ukraine's capital

2007-02-02T14:54:00.000+02:00

I'm about to leave Kharkiv to take the train to Kiev (or Kyiv in Ukrainian). Lots to see there, including art and history museums, the Chernobyl Museum and various churches.

Kyiv is much more "Ukrainian" than Kharkiv, which is close to Russia geographically and linguistically. Language is a big deal in this country -- a "fault line" in journalistic terms. It divides Ukraine in several ways: The western part of the country, toward Poland, favors Ukrainian; the eastern part of the country, toward Russia, prefers Russian (as does Crimea, Ukraine's southern region, which used to be part of Russia).

Language overlaps with politics: The western part of Ukraine tended to support the "Orange Revolution" and the current president, Viktor Yushchenko; the eastern part of Ukraine tended to support Yuschchenko's opponent (and current prime minister), Viktor Yanukovich.

The politics of language plays out in several ways. The Ukrainian parliament -- the Verkhovna Rada -- has been pushing Ukrainian as a sign of the country's independence. It's the official language, of course; hence, the spelling of Kyiv. (But most outsiders consider to spell it Kiev, and some people say that for pragmatic reasons, the Verkhovna Rada should acquiesce to the "ie" spelling. I heard that the Kiev Post, a well-respected English-language paper, made that argument a few years ago. But even the Post eventually gave in, because it's now the KYIV Post.)

There is a mass communications aspect to the language debate. I have a tour book (Ukraine: The Bradt Travel Guide) that talks about how modern and tech-savvy Kharkiv is. This is true. The book then goes on to say, "Bill Gates chose Kharkiv as his base from which to launch the Ukrainian version of Windows." If that's true, it's a blunder -- along the lines of selling the Chevy Nova in Latin America (where "no va" means "doesn't go"). Kharkiv might be an appropriate launch pad for the Russian version of Windows -- but not for the Ukrainian version. Most of the media here are in Russian. (The exception: government-published newspapers.)

Language also was the focus of a recent proposal by Yushchenko. He wants a law requiring foreign films to be dubbed or subtitled in Ukrainian. Presumably, this would apply even to Russian films -- which are popular here, especially in the eastern part of the country.

Speaking of films, here's one that just opened in Kharkiv and Kyiv. Rocky speaks such a universal language :-)

I wonder how this was translated into Ukrainian: "I just want to say hi to my girlfriend, OK? Yo, Adrian! It's me, Rocky ..."

Моя Україна (My Ukraine): winter wonderland

2007-01-30T22:03:00.000+02:00

We got several inches of snow last night. Kharkiv has an efficient snow-removal system: plows were cleaning up the streets, and workers were shoveling snow onto conveyor belts that lifted the snow up into dump trucks. Not sure where the city hauls all the snow -- probably down to the Kharkiv River.

A few flakes of snow paralyzes Richmond, Va.; people flock frantically to the grocery stores to stock up on food, and the schools shut down like it's nuclear fallout. In Kharkiv, it's a different story: Life goes on as usual. I walk past several schools on my way to the JIA office, and they were all bustling this morning. Parents pull children on small sleds (or push sleds that have been converted into baby strollers).

Above and below are photos of a playground near the JIA office. Kids had been playing here earlier, but I shot these after lunch, when it may have been nap time.

This is in a neighborhood of buildings where the bottom floors appear to be offices (like JIA's) and all the other floors appear to be apartments. People have painted exterior walls and the doors of outbuildings with whimsical scenes. Here's one:

We did more than traipse around in the snow today, of course. I finished the details for a one-day workshop on advanced Internet research for journalists. Several editors have expressed tentative interest in having their staffs take such training. Now, Aleksey will translate my program, and we'll shop it around.

Also today, Selma and Aleksey set up a meeting for tomorrow with one (and possibly two) secondary-school principals. Selma is interested in working with high-school-age students on a school newspaper (I'd help out on that project, too.)

I set up some meetings for next week in Kyiv (that's the Ukranian spelling, which the national government prefers; the Russian spelling, Kiev, is what you usually see on maps outside Ukraine). Selma and I are going to meet with editors at the Kyiv Post, an excellent weekly newspaper that publishes in English, and at IREX, a non-governmental organization that, among other things, also provides journalism training.

Here are a few items from the Kyiv Post that caught my eye:

The lead photo in the latest issue is of a memorial ceremony to mark the 89th anniversary of a battle in which three hundred students were killed trying to protect the newly created People's Republic of Ukraine against Bolshevik aggression.

And the paper reported that the level of dioxin in President Viktor Yushchenko's blood has decreased by 80 percent, more than two years after the Ukrainian leader was disfigured and nearly died from poisoning during the "Orange Revolution" election campaign.

'It's in the frozen-foods section'

2007-01-28T23:02:00.000+02:00

An American couple Selma knows visited Kharkiv many years ago and became friends with a local resident named Elena Solonskaya. Selma got Elena's contact information and has been in touch with her. Elena teaches English at a military college in Kharkiv and serves as a translator. Her children have attended university in the U.S.

Today, we met Elena, had some tea and then went to an outdoor market (RIH-nak) -- far different from the Kroger-like grocery mall we visited a week ago.

The market wasn't far -- we hopped on a trolley and rode it for four stops, just past the JIA offices. The market was similar to what Lorenza and I have seen in Latin America -- and to the souks I shopped at in Morocco. Well, except that everything was in the frozen-foods section: The vendors were set up outside, undeterred by the swirling snow, biting wind and 20-degree (F) temperature.

Selma and I bought fruit, potatoes and a popular dish that is a cross between sauerkraut and cole slaw -- a sort of pickled cabbage. The only meat we saw was fish -- some of them behind a butcher-type counter (they were dead) and others foundering in a vat of water (they were alive, but not long for this world). We passed on the fish, but Elena asked where we could get some meat, and a vendor directed us to another part of the market -- mercifully, indoors!

It was an auditorium-type building where many more vendors had set up. Some were selling fruits and vegetables (I was glad we rewarded the outdoor stalwarts with our money), but others were selling things you couldn't buy in the outdoor area: yogurt, cheese, beef, chicken ...

I didn't take any pictures in the market; it seemed intrusive, and my hands were cold. I may do that some other time -- Selma and I plan to go back.

I did take a picture of a monument across from the rinak: It commemorates Aug. 23, 1943, when the Red Army finally liberated Kharkiv from the Nazis. Kharkiv suffered terribly during World War II. 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.

End of Week 1: That's a kho-lodda snow!

2007-01-26T20:31:00.000+02:00

OK; it's really not that much snow. But I couldn't resist the linguistic pun: холод ("kholod") means cold. This was the first day that we had more than flurries. The snow started as I was walking from my apartment near National University to the offices of the Journalists' Initiative Association.

I took this picture after lunch: Selma and I grabbed some blintzes and salad at a nice cafe, called Delicat, a short but slippery walk from JIA. I saw a crew on the main street, Lenin Prospect, putting up a banner advertising Marlboro cigarettes. Despite my impressions, Selma said there is a lot less smoking in Ukraine than there was when she was a Knight fellow here in 1994-95.

What else did we do today? We met with the editor of a broadcast operation that feeds local news programming to three Kharkiv television stations. She is interested in training on how journalists can use the Internet, spreadsheets and other new-media tools to do better reporting. Next week, we plan to lock down on a date for such a workshop.

Ukrainian journalists (and Ukrainians in general) are pretty tech-savvy, but I think I can show them some Google hacks and other tricks (RSS, the power of spreadsheets) that a lot of reporters don't know about. For example, you can search blog postings for references to Kharkiv -- that could be good for getting story ideas or comments from people.

On the workshop front, we now have several projects in the air: the Internet training; a two-day program in Kremenchuk about civic journalism; and a roundtable in Dnepropetrovsk about media privatization. No firm commitments or dates, but Angelina Soldatenko said the Dnepro program probably will be in early February.

Meanwhile, Selma has taken the lead on working with students. She says, rightly so, that if we could help the next generation of Ukrainian journalists, we could have an impact for decades to come. Today, we met with Oleksandr Khizhniak, head of the Student Council at National University.

Oleksandr is interested in creating an independent, lively student newspaper. We might to able to assist the students with that project. Other ideas in the mill on this "student" front include: teaching beginning journalists about ethics, interviewing, reporting and other skills (and helping them publish in a local newspaper a monthly page of stories of interest to young people); working with high school students (perhaps at a secondary school near JIA where students learn English); and starting an "English club" for Ukrainian journalists who want to speak English.

That's a pretty ambitious agenda!

We worked til about 6 p.m., then headed home on the icy-slick streets. Selma showed me how to ride the trolley (a bargain at 30 kopeks). I got off around the McDonalds (ugh!) so I could walk to a bakery that Aleksey and Angelina showed me the other night. I bought a loaf of "khleb s lukem" -- bread with onions. Later, while IM'ing Aleksey, I realized that I probably asked for "khlev s lukem" -- which is pig sty with onions. No wonder the cashier at the bakery was laughing. ;-)

Solidarity with the Soldatenkos

2007-01-23T22:28:00.000+02:00

We were working on training materials at the office of the Journalists' Initiative Association shortly after noon today when there was a rap at the door. The visitor: Abram Soldatenko, the 96-year-old father of JIA founder Angelina Soldatenko.

Mr. Soldatenko had come to the neighborhood to get a haircut; a barber shop nearby gives free cuts to senior citizens -- and he certainly qualified. For him, the statue of Lenin in the plaza near my apartment isn't just a historical monument. Mr. Soldatenko may well have seen Lenin when the communist revolutionary came to Kharkiv, said his grandson, Aleksey Soldatenko.

Aleksey and Angelina are the driving forces behind the JIA and other efforts to improve journalism in Ukraine. The entire family is filled with journalists: Angelina's husband is a former radio reporter; and Abram Soldatenko wrote for a newspaper serving a center for deaf Ukrainians. (Mr. Soldatenko himself is deaf.)

Moreover, Aleksey's sister is a journalist. In fact, from a newspaper where she worked, she took a photo of Mikhail Gorbachev -- and it is displayed in the JIA office:

Aleksey said Gorbachev was a controversial figure: While Aleksey supported Gorbachev's democratic reforms, many Soviet citizens at the time saw him as a weak leader. Incidentally, Selma met Gorbachev when he was lecturing in the U.S.

First day at work with the Soldatenkos

2007-01-22T20:10:00.000+02:00

On Sunday, Aleksey and his mother Angelina came by my apartment -- with Selma -- and we went to a park near my apartment. The park and adjoining square (with the statue of Lenin) is huge: Aleksey said it's the biggest square in Europe and second-largest in the world. It's called Ploshcha Svobody, or Freedom Square. Here's the Wikipedia entry, as well as a shot from Google Earth.

We had coffee at a round coffeeshop in the middle of the park -- like a Chuck E. Cheese, where a clown orchestrated dress-up and singing games for children and at least one birthday party was in evidence. It was a little loud and wacky, but I'm finding that that's Ukraine!

After that, I found an ATM and got some cash. Then we went to Aleksey's soccer game. (The journalists here have an elaborate system of sports leagues: soccer, tennis, an Olympics ... As Aleksey said, it's a mystery how any of them have time to write stories.)

Then, we hit the MegaMarket. It was in a mall, and huge, and I stocked up for several days.

This morning (Monday), I met Aleksey and Angelina in one of the Metro stations within walking distance of my apartment. We took a Metro to the Botanical Gardens stop -- not a good day to visit the gardens; the sky was gray, and there was snow, rain and hail, in no particular order. The Journalists' Initiative Association has an office a short walk from that Metro station.

Then we spent the day talking about training that we could do during our fellowship. The JIA is very interested in promoting civic journalism; I'll be involved in that, along with teaching about computer-assisted reporting, citizen journalism, blogging and other new media skills. The association is also interested in working with students at National University in Kharkiv -- and that's right up Selma's alley.

On Tuesday, we're going to meet with a local TV news director to talk about specific projects.

Dinner 'At The Sisters'

2007-01-21T18:23:00.000+02:00

It's about 500 kilometers from Kiev to Kharkiv. But it's worth the drive, Aleksey said, because at the midpoint is a restaurant famous for its thoroughly Ukrainian food and atmosphere: "Y Cectep," or "At the Sisters."

So that's where we stopped for dinner. And I can see why it's as mandatory as stopping at, say, Pierce's Pitt Bar-B-Que in Williamsburg if you're driving from Norfolk to Richmond. We had a variety of Ukrainian dishes, and they were great. I had a cold horse-radish soup (called kholodnyk), which I know doesn't sound particularly good or appropriate on such a cold day, but it was what Aleksey recommended, and for good reason. We also had salted vegetables (cabbage, tomatoes, cucumbers); a cabbage salad; and I had a pork roll with a side of smashed potatoes and onions.

No alcohol for dinner (though I noticed the vodka was flowing pretty well on the plane). But we had an unusual drink called kvas, made of fermented bread.

It isn't just the food that makes Y Cectep such a treat. The restaurant is a kitchy history and art museum, with memorabilia from Soviet times, such as this telephone (which the KGB may still have bugged!) ...

... and hilarious drawings on the wall like:

I have a lot more pictures in a Web album.

Back in the U.S.S.R. -- almost ;)

2007-01-20T22:20:00.000+02:00

I had a ticket on a flight that was to leave Richmond, Va., at 2:30 p.m. on Friday, Jan 19. Supposedly, it would get to JFK in New York around 3:30 -- giving me plenty of time to find the gate for the 5:20 direct flight to Kiev. According to the schedule, the JFK flight would land shortly after 10 a.m. at the Borispol airport just outside Ukraine's capital.

My itinerary assumed that the planes would be on time. However, the flight out of Richmond was delayed 90 minutes. We sat on the runway because the plane had too much fuel, and thus too much weight, and there weren't any empty fuel trucks that could offload the excess fuel. Eventually, a thirsty plane arrived, relieving us of enough fuel that we could take off.

I didn't arrived at JFK until 4:55. I could hear the "last boarding" announcement for the flight to Kiev, which was at a gate on the other side of the airport. I ran through the hallways, barely made my flight and prayed that my luggage caught up with me (it did).

The flight out of JFK left right on time and arrived an hour earlier than scheduled in Kiev -- at about 9:30 on Saturday morning. I cleared passport control, got my luggage, then got through customs, then met up with Aleksey, who was standing outside the arrival gauntlet:

I've got more pictures posted at http://picasaweb.google.com/jeffrey.south

Unfortunately, nowhere on the plane or at the Kiev airport did I see Selma. Turns out she had much worse luck than I did. Her flight from Boston was delayed, so she missed the JFK-Kiev flight. Aleksey and I (and Aleksey's friend, Misha) hung around the airport, figuring Selma would arrive on a later flight. She did, at around 3 p.m., on a plane from Paris.

The wait give me a chance to study Ukrainian culture. Some observations: I think the smoking rules here were written by Philip Morris. The cafe in the airport was a cloud of tar and nicotine; you were smoking whether you wanted to or not. Another observation: The temperature was just a few degrees above zero, but that doesn't stop Ukrainians from enjoying ... ice cream. The airport's Tastee Freeze stand was doing brisk business, as we were, uh, cooling our heels (chilling out?) waiting for Selma's plane.

We did take a break -- retreating to Aleksey's car for sandwiches. While I sat in the back seat, I took the opportunity to practice random sentences from my Russian phrasebook, such as:

Min-ya tash-nit -- "I'm going to throw up!"

Ya pi-ri-a-di-va-yus -- "I'm not decent!"

And: Ru-ki ko-rat-ki -- which literally means "Your hands are too short" but which the book curiously says is an idiom for "You've got no hope in hell!" I'm not quite sure how short hands translate into eternal damnation. But Misha found this somewhat amusing.

Journalism and other fellowship in Ukraine

2007-01-19T23:00:00.000+02:00

If a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, then the blog about the journey begins with a single word. In my case, it's Спасибо -- Russian for "thanks" -- to everyone who has made possible the six-month adventure I'm about to start in Ukraine. (I'm writing this blog entry on the plane to Kiev.) I wouldn't be here if not for:

X The Center for International Journalists, which selected me for a Knight International Journalism Fellowship.

X The Journalists' Initiative Association in Kharkiv, which is hosting me here.

X Virginia Commonwealth University and its School of Mass Communications, which granted me a semester's leave to pursue this opportunity.

X My friends and family -- and especially my partner Lorenza, my goddess of packing and many other skills -- for invaluable support and encouragement.

Where I'm headed, and why:

The Knight program has assigned me to work with the JIA in Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, in the eastern part of the country, about 30 miles from the Russian border. The association has an excellent track record of training journalists to do a better job of conveying news and engaging citizens. I will lend a hand however I can -- learning more than teaching, I'm sure, but providing guidance in areas of my expertise, such as new media and civic journalism.

I will be in Ukraine for six months. For the first three months, I will be accompanied by Selma Williams, who is living proof that great journalists never stop learning or sharing information. After a 30-year career in newspapers, Selma, who is a member of the New England Press Association's Hall of Fame, served a Knight fellowship in Ukraine in 1994-95. Since then, she has trained journalists in four former Soviet republics -- and is returning to Ukraine for a second Knight fellowship.