THE NATIONAL UNION OF
JOURNALISTS OF UKRAINE
Newsrooms participating in the project of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine (NUJU) called Your Audience is Your Strength have started its new stage. The project started at the end of last year and is implemented within the framework of the Ukrainian Media Fund Nordic program for supporting regional and local media.
The first meeting of the new stage brought together editors online. It was dedicated to how newsrooms can learn from each other. The project mentor Vitalii Holubev joined the conversation with Mukachevo – from the newsroom of the Panorama newspaper and the PMG UA website, where he hospitably received his colleagues, editor Ivan Harahonych.
Opening the meeting, NUJU President Sergiy Tomilenko reminded what this cooperation is based on. Ukrainian Media Fund Nordic is a charitable initiative of publishers and media businesses of Scandinavian countries: Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark.
“Our cooperation has been ongoing since the beginning of the full-scale invasion. The first bulletproof vests were provided to Ukrainian journalists by the Swedish company Bonnier News. Later, publishers began to support independent regional media as businesses, he noted.
One of the founders of the fund, the Swedish Media Business Association (Tidningsutgivarna, TU), is channeling a targeted donation through the NUJU to support 25 local newspapers in frontline areas. What began as a six-month program, the Swedish partners agreed to extend for another six months, so now it is a one-year program of direct financial support for the frontline press.
“We prioritize looking for and implementing initiatives to help frontline media. In the “red zone,” a newspaper is often the only source of verified information,” stressed Sergiy Tomilenko.
As an example, the President of the NUJU cited a recent trip to the frontline Sumy Region.
“My colleagues and I traveled the route of Oleksii Pasiuha (editor-in-chief of the Vorskla newspaper, – Ed.), which is considered one of the most dangerous newspaper routes in the world. Oleksii, together with his wife Nataliya, overcomes it every week from Okhtyrka to the border with russia,” he said.
The main innovation of the second stage is the format of exchange of experience. When asked what was missing in the program, the editors most often answered that they would like to know how their colleagues work: what difficulties they face, what was successful and what was not.
Three closed zoom conferences are planned throughout July and August. At each of the five newsrooms, they will present their experience – for 10–15 minutes, telling what worked and what didn’t. The first ones to speak will be the newsrooms that have been implementing their project applications for several months; new participants will join the presentations in August.
Vitalii Holubev outlined his vision of this work.
“No matter how authoritative the invited expert is, when a colleague who works in the same context as you shares their experience, it is perceived in a special way,” the mentor explained.
He warned colleagues against the temptation to rely on spectacular presentations.
“The main thing is not the beauty of the slides, because artificial intelligence will draw anything. The main thing is the living experience of a real person, which you can share in your circle,” said Vitalii Holubev.
According to him, it is no less valuable to talk about failures.
“Sometimes what didn’t work is more interesting than what did work. It supports you psychologically: you understand that you’re not alone, that everyone has the same plus or minus,” the mentor noted.
He urged not to focus on “donor” figures – percentages of audience growth – but to talk about quality work and proven hypotheses. Holubev formulated the summary of each meeting as follows:
“I want everyone to come up with at least one specific idea at the end: “And we’ll try this too.”
In addition to sharing experiences, participants are waiting for two thematic webinars, the idea of which also grew out of requests from the newsrooms. Concluding the meeting, project coordinator Iryna Khromenko thanked the newsrooms for their participation and the donor – Ukrainian Media Fund Nordic, thanks to which this support became possible.
“The interest of this project depends only on you and me. If we want to share our experiences and learn something from each other – it will be a very good result,” she concluded.
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The project Your Audience is Your Strength has become one of the key areas of NUJU’s work to support local and regional media in 2025–2026. Its goal is to help newsrooms not only survive in wartime, but also build sustainable connections with their communities, better understand the needs of readers, and transform the audience into an active community around the media.
The program is implemented by the NUJU in partnership with the Ukrainian Media Fund Nordic (UMFN). As part of the grant competition, newsrooms received micro-grants for audience engagement projects: conducting surveys, creating reading clubs, new communication formats, developing social networks and community engagement tools. Over a hundred applications were submitted to the competition, and newsrooms from different regions of Ukraine became participants in the program.
An important component of the project was the study of local media practices. During the work of the newsroom, for the first time, they systematically studied their own audience and often found that the real needs of readers differ from editorial ideas. Based on the results of the program, the UMFN prepared an analytical report dedicated to trust in local media, the role of the journalist’s brand, and mechanisms for audience development in communities.
The cooperation with the UMFN has been ongoing since 2022 and goes far beyond the boundaries of a single project. The fund supports training programs, webinars, grant support for newsrooms, and the transfer of equipment and charging stations to ensure the operation of the media during the war.
The UMFN itself is an international initiative of Nordic media organizations, created to support Ukrainian journalists and publishers after the start of the full-scale russian invasion. Among its founders and partners are leading media associations in Northern Europe, in particular the Swedish press publishers’ association Tidningsutgivarna (with which the NMFU, in particular, jointly implements the Frontline Press program), as well as media associations in Denmark, Norway, and Finland.
Thus, the project Your Audience is Your Strength has become not only a grant program, but also a practical laboratory for studying how local media can strengthen trust, develop their communities, and increase their own resilience in wartime.
NUJU Information Service
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