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Four Local De-Statized Print Media Receive Mentoring Support from Internews Partner

December 11 – USAID Media Program in Ukraine’s (Internews) partner Pylyp Orlyk Institute for Democracy delivered the first module of its local de-statized media mentorship program.

 The “Local Media Audience and Its Needs” module was taught to representatives of print media “Druzhba” (Friendship), Odesa region, “Narodna Trybuna” (People’s Tribune), Zhytomyr region, “Mayak Media”, Kharkiv region, and “Nashe Slovo” (Our Word), Volyn region. POID expert, journalist, and editor Olena Samoilenko was the mentor for this training.


Two professionals from each media were selected through an open competition to be trained through six modules in quality content production, adherence to journalism standards, legal aspects of journalist work, and revenue diversification. Following each module, the media specialists will receive individual mentoring support on the issues of highest interest or concern to their media companies. The training and mentoring will help local de-statized media reach editorial independence and organizational sustainability.

The editors and journalists explored various tools of audience study and developed a list of topics for new year festivities and the Covid-19 lockdown, a time when the number of hard news stories will decline. The trainer assigned them to develop a content plan and to analyse their media content related to the needs of their target audiences using a particular methodology. Tetiana Terzi, editor of “Druzhba” newspaper said: “We need to better know our audience and its needs. As for upcoming month, we will cover topics which are always of a good interest to readers: unemployment, relationships between children and parents, the pandemic. There are much more, so we are going to tackle them.”

During the next five modules journalists will be trained and mentored in modern design, audience reach, ethics and gender standards, communication strategy, legal expertise, business development, and financial and management skills.


More on the website of Pylyp Orlyk Institute for Democracy in Ukrainian