CRISIS AS AN OPPORTUNITY

challenge

A new reality for media

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a new reality, both for the practice and the business of journalism in Ukraine. The damage wrought upon the Ukrainian media by the pandemic became apparent almost immediately. According to data published by Ukraine's National Union of Journalists at the beginning of April 2020, every fifth Ukrainian media outlet reduced its salary outlays, every twentieth reduced staff and every tenth suspended its activity during the quarantine.

It quickly became clear that every editorial office in the country had to drastically alter its pre-existing working format.

solution

In order to help editorial offices to adapt to new working conditions, we have designed and conducted an online course called The Crisis and the Work of Editorial Offices: Implementing Opportunities for Journalists.

Its driving idea is to see in the crisis new opportunities for editorial offices and a chance for journalists to practically demonstrate the full value of high-quality materials. Because one can learn valuable lessons from quarantine (as in other similar crisis situations) and something that seems at the first glance a challenge may be transformed into a chance. How can we seize these chances? Our instructors gave answers and practical advice through the course’s six modules.

Course trainers

Vitalii Moroz – head of new media projects at Internews Ukraine. Vitalii leads programs in digital literacy and cybersecurity for journalists and civil society (Digital Security School 380). Apart from this, he runs projects on internet freedom and digital rights enforcement (netfreedom.org.ua). He is the author of three online courses for journalists. He graduated from Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (Political Studies) and has a Masters in Journalism from Emerson College in Boston.

Mykhailyna Skoryk – head of the Media Masters agency, media instructor with 10 years of professional experience. In the past he was the chief editor of the online outlets podrobnosti.ua and tochka.net, editor on television channels including “1+1”, Business, and TRK “Ukraine''. He graduated from the Institute of Journalism at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and the School of Journalism DFJ at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. He is a certified trainer of DW Akademie.

Leading representatives of foreign media outlets such as ВВС, Figaro, Liberation, Voice of America, Deutsche Welle, and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) also joined us for discussions during the webinars in order to share their working experience in crisis situations.

Based on the results of the online course, we prepared 24 video lessons of 7–16 minutes each. All of the video lessons from our course are available here.

Now journalists and editors can look through materials at their convenience and put what they earn right to work. The lessons are grouped by topics that match the basic course modules.

outcome

172 media workers registered for our six-module online course. Webinar recordings and video lessons got more than 80000 views on Facebook and YouTube. Our online course generated huge interest among people in the media industry. The participants praised it as practical, relevant, and informative.

Participants also praised the practical usefulness of the course’s supplementary materials. It was convenient for journalists and editors to look through the short video lessons organized by specific topics. We are extremely happy that our online course has been able to help journalists and writers to overcome the pandemic crisis and emerge as stronger professionals.

The webinars were organized by Internews Ukraine with the support of the “Media programme in Ukraine” financed by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and implemented by the international organization Internews.