A Sad Day for Independent Journalism in Ukraine

** Update as of Nov. 11, 2021 18:30 GMT

Kyiv Post publisher Adnan Kivan has appointed Luc Chenier to the position of Kyiv Post CEO. Chenier, a Canadian, served as Kyiv Post CEO from 2016 to 2018. Since then he has been working on establishing a new online platform for dads and moms

“Luc will oversee the next stage of the Kyiv Post’s development as we proceed with ambitious expansion plans,” the publisher said in a statement for release this morning. “We look forward to continuing our close cooperation with the Ukrainian and international communities in the weeks and months ahead as the Kyiv Post enters an exciting new phase under Luc’s leadership.” On Monday, Adnan fired the entire news staff and announced that he was suspending the newspaper and news site for a major re-boot.

Chenier said today: “This week’s events have sparked understandable alarm over the future direction of the Kyiv Post...I have received assurances from Kyiv Post publisher Adnan Kivan that the respect towards editorial independence which he has consistently demonstrated throughout his three years as owner of the paper remains unchanged.” Chenier said he plans to meet individually with each reporter and editor to gauge their interest in working with the new Kyiv Post. Without setting a date, he promised: “The Kyiv Post will be back soon.”

Whether the newsroom staff will cooperate with Chenier and believe assurances of editorial independence is another matter. A group of more than sacked staffers have already issued a statement saying they plan to part ways and form a new media entity.

A statement read: “Mr. Kivan refused to put the paper up for sale. Instead, he offered the sacked staff an option to return to the Kyiv Post and work under new management. The team has decided to decline this offer, as we consider it impossible to work with an owner who seeks to interfere in editorial decisions.”

*Luc Chenier (r) standing next to former Kyiv Post editor Brian Bonner in February 2018 as he was announcing his plans to leave the newspaper to start a new advertising agency. (Credit: Kyiv Post)*

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Readers of the English-language daily, Kyiv Post, woke up Monday morning to the shocking news that one of Ukraine’s and E. Europe’s most important media outlets had been shuttered by its eccentric owner, Adnan Kivan, and that all the journalists had been sacked.

The move was unexpected - especially after Kivan announced expansion plans, including into the Ukrainian language market. Online posts expressed shock, outrage and sadness towards the demise of a paper which called itself “Ukraine’s global voice since 1995”

According to a statement signed by newsroom staff, Kivan had rebuffed their concerns that his expansion plans to create a standalone Ukrainian-language daily were overly ambitious. The statement goes on to say that he refused to sell the paper back to journalists.

(A bizarre statement on the Kyiv Post website says the paper is being closed for “a short time” while it re-organizes into a multi-lingual format. “God bless all of us. One day, we hope to reopen the newspaper bigger and better,” the statement said).

The Kyiv Post has been around for almost as long as an independent Ukraine - holding elected leaders to account, going after the bad guys, including the country’s extremely greedy oligarchs. It’s also held great events and celebrated Ukraine’s up and coming talent. Editor Brian Bonner has run a tight shop, nurturing many fine journalists. The paper has republished several of my own commentaries, quoted me and has had me as a moderator at its signature Tiger Conference. While the printed paper had been distributed for free in and around Kyiv, a pay-to-read model - which has been met with various degrees of success elsewhere - had been introduced for the online version.

In closing the Kyiv Post the way he did, Kivan has exhibited the same commercial callousness of the U.S. venture capital funds gobbling up and destroying some of America’s finest metropolitan dailies.

*In happier times in September 2021, editor Brian Bonner (l) with the Kyiv Post’s eccentric publisher and owner Adnan Kivan.*

In Ukraine however, workers have very few protections and almost no reasonable avenues to seek redress from unfair labour practices. When the administration of President Volodymyr Zelensky cancelled the licenses of several TV stations suspected of being pro-Russian in February 2021, hundreds of journalists were suddenly made redundant.

The Kyiv Post is too important of an outlet to just vanish into thin air. It’s incumbent upon the expat community, diaspora members and ordinary Ukrainians who care about an independent English-language voice in Ukraine to come together to either rescue the paper or help create an alternative outlet, purpose-fit for the times, that can save this great talent pool and create a space for others to come.

A rescue plan, backed by current editorial staff, need not be a charity case. There’s plenty of resource among the countless foundations and family wealth funds in the United States and elsewhere. Another source could come from the billion of dollars in assets under management at Ukrainian credit unions in North America. There’s also reporting collaboration support available from entities such as The Fuller Project. Well-funded entities such as Internews - which claims to have supported independent media in 100 countries, from radio stations in refugee camps, to hyper-local news outlets, to individual activists and reporters - offers free '“business expertise to help media outlets become financially sustainable.”

And todays’s technology allows money to be raised quickly on a global scale: for its launch in 2015, the Spain-based online newspaper, El Espanol, raised $3.98 million in just two months from 5,624 patrons. The Dutch/English-language start-up The Correspondent raised $2.6 million for its launch in 2018 (the outlet became one of the many victims of the pandemic economic downturn).

As I wrote in my book, Digital Pandemic: “Crowd-funded publications do suffer far less pressure from government, big business and advertisers, so they can go the extra mile in investigations.”

In a depressing media landscape dominated by the country’s oligarchs and in a country constantly under a hybrid information war from Russia, the need couldn’t be greater.