Good evening friends, welcome to the Kyiv Post gala, a celebration of independent journalism and our 20th year as a newspaper. It’s great to see all of you beautiful people in the same room.
It’s a big honor because everyone in this room has contributed to the Kyiv Post’s success one way or another, as an advertiser, a sponsor, a subscriber, a donor, a former colleague, a friend or, very importantly, as a reliable source of information. Newspapers are only as good as their sources and we have excellent ones who help us to present an accurate picture of what is going on in Ukraine.
We feel a little strange tonight because the Kyiv Post doesn’t like to be the story.
We like to cover the story.
But we need staff and resources to do our jobs.
Many things have changed since the revolution, but media ownership is not one of them. Most are still owned by Ukrainian oligarchs, others by Ukrainian politicians and some are 100-percent government financed. We don’t fit any of those categories.
We hear a lot now about reducing the harmful influence of oligarchs, of de-oligarchization, yet five oligarchs still own most of the nation’s media. My hope is that Ukraine will de-oligarchize its media not by censorship or taking property, but by supporting independent news media and by stopping support for media outlets where, if the owner doesn’t like what you’re saying, you can’t talk on his TV station, or be quoted in his newspaper.
Independent journalism means that journalists decide what is news, free from outside pressure, and how to present it credibly, fairly and accurately. It means a competition of ideas in the search for truth.
There is no perfect business model. But the best guarantee of quality journalism is financial independence. This is what the Kyiv Post achieved for most of its life and what it strives to achieve again.
We have three main sources of revenue:
1) advertising and sponsorships;
2) subscriptions; and
3) grants and donations to our non-profit Media Development Foundation. We are also fortunate to have an owner who not only saved the Kyiv Post six years ago, he still invests in us today and still protects the newspaper’s independence as he keeps hoping that we will break even one day.
I remember meeting the publisher of a small newspaper in Donetsk 16 years ago and I asked: “Who finances your newspaper?”
He replied, “No one – we’re independent.”
And I asked, “So that means you’re poor?”
And he replied: “Yes, we’re poor, but proud of our independence.”
Independent journalism is a cornerstone of democracy. If the profession is weak and poor, the democracy will be weak and poor. So we need your support as much or more than ever. People don’t live forever, but newspapers can and we want the Kyiv Post or the idea of the Kyiv Post to be one of them.
But for tonight, let’s just have the best party we can and forget about all of our problems. Enjoy the evening, the entertainment and each other’s company.
Now, the person I am introducing is living proof that you should always be nice to student interns because they could become your boss one day. That’s what happened to me when I hired Nataliya Bugayova as a journalism intern in 2008. Six years later, she became the Kyiv Post CEO, the first woman and the first Ukrainian in this role, and she’s a good one. So please remember her name – Nataliya Bugayova — because she will be a star.
Kyiv Post chief editor Brian Bonner can be reached at [email protected]
