You're reading: Kyiv Post’s ​Goncharova wins fellowship to work at American newspaper

For Kyiv Post staff writer Olena Goncharova, her third attempt to win an Alfred Friendly Press Partners fellowship proved to be the charm.

The program, administered at the Missouri School of Journalism in Columbia, selected Goncharova among four Kyiv Post applicants to be the newspaper’s third fellowship winner in as many years.

Goncharova will work for six months, from March through September, at an American newspaper yet to be determined. Previous Kyiv Post fellows Anastasia Forina and Oksana Grytsenko worked at the Chicago Tribune and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, respectively, in 2014 and 2015.

“The Kyiv Post nominated four good candidates for the fellowship,” program director David Reed said. “We chose Olena Goncharova because she has the qualities young journalists need to succeed in our program. She’s talented, passionate, dedicated and eager to learn all she can to become an even better journalist. I was very impressed by her reporting about the war, her coverage of corruption and her articles on political reforms.”

 

Alfred Friendly

Alfred Friendly, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post journalist, established a foundation in his name in 1983 to help boost training of non-American journalists. (presspartners.org)

The nonprofit organization covers all of the costs of the fellowship, including transportation, housing, training, insurance and a monthly stipend for living expenses, which add up to more than $25,000 per fellow over the six-month period.

Late last year, through the crowd-funding site GoFundMe, the Kyiv Post raised $5,350 from supporters to cover about 20 percent of the cost of the third fellowship.

“We’re really grateful for the donations that will allow us to continue the Kyiv Post fellowship,” Reed said. “The campaign has both practical and symbolic value. By surpassing the fundraising goal so quickly, donors dramatically demonstrated their high regard for the Kyiv Post and its efforts to continually improve.”

Goncharova and the seven other fellows in the program will get extensive training at the University of Missouri, widely considered as the best journalism school in the United States, before moving on to their jobs at newsrooms such as the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal.

The fellows will get hands-on training in data reporting, mobile reporting and using social media as a reporting tool.

Scholars lecture fellows on ethics, communications law and reporting on trauma and conflict.

The second round of advanced training focuses on multimedia production and investigative journalism.

Goncharova, 24, is a graduate of Taras Shevchenko National University’s School of Journalism and a specialized Impact Media training program for business journalists. She joined the Kyiv Post staff in 2012 said she is looking forward to improving her skills in America.

“Being selected as Alfred Friendly fellow is a great honor and responsibility at the same time,” Goncharova said. “This will be one of the most challenging yet rewarding experiences for me. I’m looking forward to using this opportunity not only to grow professionally, but to share this knowledge later with my Ukrainian colleagues.”

Reed said the Alfred Friendly Foundation, which has trained more than 300 journalists from nearly 80 countries since 1984, considers Ukraine a priority because “it has reached a critical juncture in its history.

“Ukraine’s democratic future and its relationship with the European Union and the United States is closely linked with the future of independent media in Ukraine.We think it’s important to invest in Ukraine’s independent media, and we’re glad to see that many of the Kyiv Post readers agree,” Reed said.

AFPP

The seven fellows in the 2015 Alfred Friendly Press Partners program included Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Grytsenko, far right, at the University of Missouri in Columbia. (presspartners.org)

The Kyiv Post partnership with the Alfred Friendly Press Partners grew out of the now-defunct Foundation for Effective Governance in Kyiv’s Impact Media program, which provided specialized training in economics and business journalism to Ukrainian journalists in 2014. The Impact Media program, managed by former Kyiv Post CEO and staff writer Nataliya Bugayova, funded the first fellowship to go to a Ukrainian journalist in the program’s history.

Alfred Friendly (1911-1983) was a Washington Post journalist who won the 1968 Pulitzer-Prize for his coverage of the Middle East War. He served as the newspaper’s managing editor from 1955 to 1965. For more information, go to the Alfred Friendly Press Partners website.

Kyiv Post chief editor Brian Bonner can be reached at [email protected]