“We are very glad that our partners support real media” – Sergiy Tomilenko

A surge of online seminars and training sessions conducted by the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine (NUJU) for a broad audience from the most remote corners of Ukraine was observed during the Covid pandemic. The second wave of such a surge falls on wartime in 2022-2023. The organizers of the training sessions set their task to help journalists with practical advice in the fields of economy, psychology, working in front-line conditions and de-occupied territories, and introduce new technologies.

Talking to the participants of the webinar titled How To Strengthen Local Media Sustainability In War Conditions, the President of the NUJU, Sergiy Tomilenko, said:

“We continue to organize educational training sessions and seminars at the request of our colleagues from Ukrainian media working in the real media sector.

According to the research carried out by the NUJU, the main request today concerns resolving the economic stability problem. Even in such a challenging time of war, media workers strive to find economic opportunities to remain in the profession and continue their noble mission of quickly providing important, verified, objective information to Ukrainians and their foreign consumers.

The tendency not to deprive Ukrainians of access to quality information under any conditions is observed at all levels of mass media – from national to regional, local, and hyperlocal. And this is very important in the current wartime!

We conduct webinars in cooperation and with the support of the Swiss non-profit organization Fondation Hirondelle and the International Institute for Regional Media and Information (IRMI, Ukraine). We invite well-known and experienced speakers to share their knowledge and advice on how to strengthen the sustainability of newsrooms, carry out a certain reorganization, and use the economic assistance international donors provide to Ukrainian media. It is about making grant project support that goes to Ukraine more accessible to our regional media thanks to the solidarity of international media organizations with Ukrainian colleagues.

Currently, in Ukraine, with the support of Fondation Hirondelle and IRMI, a project to increase the sustainability of Ukrainian media is being implemented. Accordingly, 18 Ukrainian media from the east and south of Ukraine are currently being strongly supported. Media from Chernihiv, Ivano-Frankivsk, and Cherkasy are also represented.

We are delighted that thanks to such support, the Bakhmut newspaper Vpered edited by Svitlana Ovcharenko, is being published; that the Kherson newspaper Novyi Den has been revived and is today the main channel of information for the Kherson Region; that the newspaper Vorskla is published in the Sumy Region and Visti Prydniproviya – in Dnipro, etc. And we are very glad that our partners support real media and support colleagues we recommend to them. And it is worth saying that colleagues, in turn, responsibly use the support to hold on in the current most challenging time to preserve their media in the future.

When we talk about the present time, we don’t consider the media as one of the types of business, as it is a very bitter business. In Ukraine, the mass media newsrooms never talked about big money; mostly, it was and still is about great responsibility. Therefore, when we talk about international solidarity with Ukrainian media, about how the Union helps journalists and editors at the forefront of information work in contact with Ukrainians, we embody our primary mission – providing information.

Thanks to the objective information from mass media, Ukrainians get the opportunity to make important decisions, which always, and especially in wartime, quite often help save lives and health. At the same time, the mass media unite Ukrainians on the way to Victory, rallying them to rebuild what was destroyed by the enemy.

I would like to draw attention to the fact that the NUJU organizes various educational events with the support of Fondation Hirondelle and IRMI and our other partners and donors from various countries and organizations.

In particular, we are currently implementing a large project of mentoring educational support for the media teams from the de-occupied and front-line territories. The project is implemented with the support of the UNESCO headquarters and the Japanese government. It is coordinated by Iryna Khromenko. Thanks to the project, a total of 27 newsrooms have direct access to three mentors on economic sustainability and digitization standards. And we also hold webinars, which we constantly announce via the Telegram channel, Spilka News; NUJU website, and via the Journalist of Ukraine page on Facebook.

I recommend that you follow the messages on our information platforms and take advantage of the opportunity to receive knowledge that is very important in everyday practice. During the webinars, we share our experiences and discuss elements that can be useful in your work. We also highlight the financial and technical capabilities of donors or the NUJU, which may be helpful in your practical work.

The webinar How To Strengthen Local Media Sustainability In War Conditions was held by the NUJU with the support of the Swiss non-profit organization Fondation Hirondelle and the IRMI as part of the project titled Strengthening Ukrainian Media Sustainability financed by Swiss Solidarity.

Olha Voitsekhivska, Journalist of Ukraine