Visnyk Polissia newspaper replaces Volodymyretskyi Visnyk

The newspaper is now distributed in the communities of Varash and Sarny Districts, in Rivne, and even in Kyiv

Editor Serhii Skibchyk is a war correspondent working on the hot Zaporizhzhia Axis, and the current editor, Liudmyla Bosyk, is fighting in the information field.

If not everyone, then many are familiar with the name of the Volodymyretskyi Visnyk newspaper, which is in the Rivne Region. Last year, when they were just starting to think about subscription-2024, its current editor, Liudmyla Bosyk, announced the intention to expand the readership of this 80-year-old publication to the entire territory of the newly created Varash District.

It is probably worth reminding that the long-time editor of Volodymyretskyi Visnyk, Serhii Skibchyk, already on February 25, 2022, stood up for Ukraine in the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) and handed over all the work to Liudmyla Bosyk in one day. Currently, Serhii Skibchyk is a press officer of the 65^th Separate Mechanized Brigade, which destroys the enemy in very hot areas of the front.

For Liudmyla and the editorial team of steadfast women, these two years of full-scale war were marked by constant work to maintain the financial stability of the newsroom so that Volodymyretskyi Visnyk stood firmly on its feet in a difficult time for everyone. Only by efforts known to her, but it succeeded. Therefore, when Liudmyla spoke about a new step – the reorganization of Volodymyretskyi Visnyk into a publication at a truly regional level – it was immediately believed that she would succeed.

A lot of work was done: there were numerous meetings with the leaders of the Varash District and communities, fellow publishers, and the interests of potential readers were studied. In the end, everything culminated in the fact that instead of Volodymyretskyi Visnyk, Visnyk Polissia is now being published and spread not only in the communities of the former Volodymyrets but also in the communities of the entire Varash District.

How does the newsroom work now? Our conversation with Liudmyla Bosyk was dedicated to the following topic.

There are losses in circulation, but there are subscribers in the capital as well

The first is about the results of the subscription for 2024. As is actually true for many other publications, some losses are felt here as well. The updated Visnyk Polissia for February had a circulation of 30% less than Volodymyretskyi Visnyk in 2023 and 50% less than in 2022.

“And all this,” says the editor, “is a result of the poor work of Ukrposhta. We receive feedback from our readers in letters, phone calls, and in personal communication. We hear one and the same thing – people love our newspaper and they do need it. They apologize for not paying in advance but say, “Why pay for a newspaper that we do not see, we do not receive it.”

The biggest problem is in remote villages, where mobile offices do not deliver the newspaper to the subscriber’s address en masse. We record violations and write complaints, but the circulation volumes were lost, and instead of last year’s 1,500 copies, we have 1,200.

Most people subscribe to the newspaper for a quarter and for six months, but at the same time, we already have up to a hundred annual subscriptions. This means that, despite the dishonesty of Ukrposhta and the increase in the price of subscriptions, people believe that we are interesting and necessary to them.

We can’t help but be glad that we have subscribers in our new territories, in Rivne and even in Kyiv, where twenty-two people have subscribed to Visnyk Polissia for different terms.

As for the electronic subscription, Liudmyla considers it not a very good option. She cites an example when someone, having subscribed to a copy, distributes it to colleagues via email. The plus is that the newspaper has more readers; the minus is that the newspaper has fewer subscribers.

A journalist should not only be a “writer”…

Of course, the loss of circulation is not pleasant. But Liudmyla Bosyk did not panic because of this and said, “The main thing is that the subscription base remains, plus we have retail. And then we will work to attract more subscribers from new communities.

Her credo is that “Today, a journalist should not only be a “writer,” not only produce information. Today, we have to be the point of communication to help people solve their problems. Only then will people need us. And as soon as we become consumers and wasters of the funds and resources that the subscription gives us, we will disappear from this media landscape as media.”

She told, what happens in the communities, in order to find out what interests people, what they would like to read about in the newspaper, the problems of people and communities. For example, a high-profile case and materials, as a result of Liudmyla‘s trip to the Zarichne Community with subsequent publications on all resources of Visnyk Polissia, became the publicity and exposure of the fraudulent scheme of a postman, who is suspected of forging signatures and embezzling large amounts of pension funds intended for people. Today, this case is in the hands of law enforcement officers – an investigation is underway, and the problem of the work of Ukrposhta is already being considered at the regional level.

A site that has a million views per year

Today, in addition to the newspaper, Volodymyretskyi Visnyk LLC also has a powerful website, Volodymyrets City, which had almost a million views and 200,000 users over the past year. And all that despite the fact that there were failures in the administrative platform as well as hacker attacks. Another 15,000 users have Facebook; they are also present on Twitter, Instagram, and Telegram, where so far not as many readers as we would like.

“Thanks to participation in various educational projects during these two difficult years, we have already learned to adapt materials to both printed resources and digital networks. We post operational materials on digital resources, and when we edit a newspaper, we check how relevant this or that material is so that its information is not out of date for the subscriber. That is why we have readers of both the printed edition and digital platforms,” says the editor of Visnyk Polissia.

She also said that the site provides an opportunity to earn from UAH 5,000 to UAH 12,000 per month on commercial publications. The funds are not very large, but not excessive and give the opportunity to keep a person to administer the site.

The newspaper is awaited every week, like the sun in the morning. It hurts that the state was indifferent to elderly people

Most of the readers of Visnyk Polissia are elderly people, and as a rule, they do not use gadgets. This, Liudmyla Bosyk believes, is a big problem. She says that our state and local authorities are indifferent to the elderly, ignoring their informational needs in the conditions of a full-scale war.

She explains her opinion:

“Where can the elderly get information? The authorities post sparse information about their activities on some of their websites and Facebook pages (with a maximum of a thousand or two readers). And many, and not only the elderly, in the villages of our border still have push-button phones, and not every house has computers. Even in Volodymyrets, pensioners who did not receive the newspaper on time complained to the newsroom. When newspaper workers visited them to find out the problem, people often showed push-button phones, and some of them didn’t even have a TV! People have television – at best, it is T2 with several channels and a ubiquitous telethon; at worst – it is a freely available russian TV option and Belarusian TV channels from the “dish” because Belarus is very close to us. And we have only just now started talking about blocking the broadcast of enemy channels!

Case in point: the woman to whom I came to find out about the bad delivery of the newspaper, showed her push-button phone and said: “The phone is only to talk to the children when they call, there is no Internet on it. And there are many such people here in our corner. So, my neighbors and I are waiting for the newspaper like the sun in the morning. We read and discuss the news among ourselves.”

Today, the newsrooms of reformed newspapers work like small business, and we use our meager earnings and our own beliefs to maintain state policy the Ukrainian idea, talk about Ukrainian patriotism, and maintain an informational front. And the essentially state-owned enterprise Ukrposhta (there 100% of the shares are state-owned!) cancels all our work and neglects the interests of the residents of border villages and towns. And it has not been possible to achieve quality delivery of the newspaper that people have been waiting for from Ukrposhta for several years in a row since the stationary branches were replaced by couriers. And the collective appeals of editors, journalists, and appeals are smashed against the wall of indifference of state men.”

Grants are one of the possibilities for financial support and development

When Liudmyla Bosyk was suddenly left with the women’s team on the editorial “farm” in the conditions of a full-scale war, the first question that arose was what to do next: how to earn and survive in the conditions of a great war? That’s when I became interested in grant projects; I knew something theoretically until then, then I studied at training events and webinars and then stubbornly applied my knowledge in practice. She started small, and gradually earning funds in various grant projects became a significant support for the editorial budget and the perspective of the newsroom. Grants gave development. This is not easy because no one will give money for nothing, reports are detailed and donors are demanding, but every positive result is worth it, the editor believes.

One of the latest projects, to which the editors of Visnyk Polissia were invited for the second time in March, is a gender-sensitive topic in materials from the Volyn Press Club.

My interlocutor told how they went to this grant project:

“Last year, we cooperated with the Volyn Press Club, studied this topic and, together with a good grade, received a diploma for success in the development of this topic. We were offered to continue cooperation on the creation of content – so that we spread among our audience the idea that a woman has all the same rights as men and that gender-based violence is unacceptable in a civilized society.

Since March, at the expense of the grant funds for the project, we are starting to create content both for the printed newspaper and for our online platforms, where we will talk about gender-sensitive processes in our society. We will write about equality in the profession, about how to fight family violence, etc., about everything that has been often and unfairly silenced and not perceived due to the lack of knowledge on gender issues.”

She works 24/7 herself, and those who are nearby try to keep up

The staff today is three plus mobilized editor Serhii Skibchyk, who serves in the AFU. There are three more freelancers – young, already-trained people who work on a fee basis as public correspondents, administrators of digital platforms, and copywriters.

Of course, the workload on all employees is high, although the salary is still very small, as Liudmyla herself says, it’s just ridiculous money. But here, they do not complain; on the contrary, they tried to become universal: they did not shy away from learning and mastering new processes for themselves. For example, one of the employees now types the newspaper, runs the website together with the editor and does sublimation. In addition, the typist underwent training and mastered the preparation of news materials.

Outsourced girls bring in interesting materials, and along with this, they successfully prepare operational news. As they said, news is first of all posted on Internet resources. When the news does not lose its relevance at the time of publication of the printed version of the newspaper, it is given on the pages of Visnyk Polissia, having been adapted to the format of the newspaper.

And accounting is not far behind in this creative and hardworking team. Previously, two people worked here – the chief accountant and the cashier, now, one chief accountant is doing the job. For a small additional fee, in addition to her main work, she accepts advertisements, edits them, prepares them for printing, and is responsible for newspaper retail and communications.

And everyone together, so to speak – with a fresh eye, proofread each draft of the newspaper before submitting it to the printing house so that not a single inaccuracy or mistake remains in the columns. Although everything happens…

This is what is called teamwork.

And the icing on the cake…

At the end of our interesting conversation, when you can’t help but wonder where the enthusiasm and strength of this woman, the mother of three wonderful children, the wife of an active military man, the journalist-activist who was forced to take on the duties of the editor’s office, come from in the difficult hour of wartime calamity, Liudmyla Bosyk reported another curiosity of their provincial editorial world Volodymyretskyi Visnyk LLC.

Olha Voitsekhivska, Journalist of Ukraine