Today’s print edition of the Kyiv Post shows off our new look, in honor of the start of our 25th year. The newspaper’s 24th birthday is Oct. 18, 2019, but we will launch a year-long celebration of the newspaper starting today.
We went with a light and uncluttered design, unlike the heavy front page of the first edition in 1995. It definitely was not a thing of beauty: The main photo captured the bloodied corpse of a shirtless “unnamed terrorist” shot dead on a Moscow street after hijacking a busload of South Korean tourists.
Nonetheless, the first edition hangs in a place of honor in our lobby, a reminder of our humble and hopeful beginnings.
But even then, the newspaper had a distinctive style, flair and news sense that foreshadowed its staying power, thanks to dozens of talented journalists, sales managers, designers, and others.
We enter our 25th year with deep gratitude — to publisher Adnan Kivan for believing and investing in us, and to our international community of readers and advertisers. Without your support, Ukraine’s Global Voice would not exist.
The Kyiv Post has been in seven offices, in Podil and Pechersk neighborhoods, on the left bank, and now in Taras Shevchenko district. I’ve been around long enough to have worked in all but the first one, an apartment that our founder, American Jed Sunden, worked from when he launched the paper. Sunden’s name appears as the first chief editor in the first edition as well. The legal notice says he registered the newspaper on Oct. 2, 1995.
Soon, the Kyiv Post will move into our eighth office in 25 years, this one on Zhylianska Street, in a brand new 22-story office/apartment complex being built by Kivan, who bought the newspaper in 2018 from Mohammad Zahoor, who in turn bought it from Sunden in 2009. The new office will be our biggest and most modern yet, a sign that we plan to stay in business for a long time to come and a demonstratable manifestation of the resources that Kivan is devoting to independent journalism.
Of course, much has changed in the last 24 years, for Ukraine and the newspaper industry. Google, Facebook and Twitter have taken much of the advertising revenue that used to go to newspapers, leaving many newsrooms emptier nowadays and forcing many newspapers out of business.
The Kyiv Post made healthy profits throughout its first 14 years in business, until the combination of a global economic recession and changing reader habits left us working harder than ever for advertising, subscriptions, grants and the benevolence of our owners.
The first edition of the Kyiv Post was published on Oct. 18, 1995. It numbered 16 pages, with a print run of 10,000 copies. The staff numbered only a handful of people, compared to the 50 employees today. Ownership has changed hands only twice since American Jed Sunden founded the newspaper and sold it to Mohammad Zahoor in 2009, who sold it to current owner Adnan Kivan in 2018.
The first edition contained mostly wire stories from the Associated Press or Interfax-Ukraine. The newspaper advertised job openings for journalists and sales managers.
The only staff-written story on the front page, by Laura Keys, would sound familiar to today’s readers: Ukraine’s parliament adopted a law to remove 4,000 businesses from a mass privatization program. According to the article, only 129 businesses had been sold under the program, far short of then-President Leonid Kuchma’s goal of selling off 8,000 state enterprises by 1995.
In 2019, Ukraine is still holding on to 3,500 state enterprises from Soviet times and has never allowed agricultural land sales.
Yevhen Marchuk was the prime minister at the time, and, in another story that will ring familiar to everyone who follows the news today, he vowed to increase domestic energy production to make Ukraine less dependent on Russian natural gas. Sound familiar? The truth is that today, Ukraine is still not energy independent.
The first edition included horoscopes, cartoons and a crossword puzzle. It also had a house ad promoting the Kyiv Post, then spelled “Kiev”: “Take off with the Kiev Post! Reach over 10,000 readers each week in Kiev’s leading English language newspaper.”
The print run of 10,000 copies, incidentally, is roughly the same as today’s, although it’s been as high as 25,000 and as low as 7,000 copies during hard times.
In what endeared the newspaper to expats in Ukraine like me, who first came in 1996, was the Kyiv Post’s coverage of everything from world political news to sports. Back then, the internet was slow, unreliable and not ubiquitous. Few people I knew had internet. We needed the Kyiv Post for all news, especially the monolingual English speakers among us.
The first Kyiv Post had few classified ads. It looks like there were lots of barter ads in the first edition, including a half-page from Computerland. Before the market pricing of ads, the Kyiv Post would trade space for products — computers, airline tickets, restaurant meals.
The “Kiev Guide” or “Tourist Tips,” taking up pages 12 and 13 with a map of the center and Kyiv metro, was also a very useful feature. It gave advice on visas (yes, they were required for Westerners back then), airports, money, hotels, transportation, safety, making phone calls and must-see tourist sites (which haven’t changed much over the years).
Page 14 was devoted to another staple of Kyiv Post coverage — restaurants, nightclubs and casinos. It included a restaurant review of fast-food burgers by the first chief editor after Sunden, Andrea Faiad. Many of the nightclubs listed don’t exist today. Back then, a club’s cover charge was quoted in “kupons” — and it ranged up to 1 million of them. “Kupons” were in place as a bridge between the Soviet ruble and today’s Ukrainian hryvnia, launched in 1996.
The back page was also devoted to culture, now called the Lifestyle section, one of he three pillars of our coverage to this day along with politics and business. It also offered readers free space to announce an event, performance or show.
And, of course, we sold subscriptions and they were a bargain. For one year, we would deliver a single copy of the weekly to your office or home for $45 and 10 copies for $90.
The view on Oct. 15 of the 22-story office/residential complex that will house the Kyiv Post when completed. The address is 68 Zhylianska St. (Volodymyr Petrov)
While we’ve changed our look, the Kyiv Post is still a bargain and is essentially operating on the same template as the first edition: Providing reliable business, political and entertainment news about Ukraine. Only today, our staff is bigger — about 50 people employed altogether. I’ve worked here when we’ve had as few as 21 people. And we now shoot videos, keep a constantly updated website and spread all of our information on social media platforms that we never dreamed would exist back then.
I became a faithful Kyiv Post reader in August 1996, when it was still in its infancy. Then I spent the summer of 1999 as chief editor and returned to Ukraine and the Kyiv Post for good in 2008. It’s been an amazing life as we’ve covered revolution, war and so much more. My talented colleagues are as passionate and as committed as ever to Ukraine.
We hope you will join us in celebrating this great institution over the next year. We have big expansion plans ahead and will share them with you as we roll out the changes. Our publisher is committed to independent journalism, generously investing resources so that we can remain an indispensable source of news about Ukraine to our readers all over the world.
Brian Bonner is the executive director and chief editor of the Kyiv Post.
