In part I, we covered Ukraine’s opposition media in the era of the Soviet Union, and in part II the first genesis of Ukrainian television in the nation after regaining its independence.
Here, we examine the growth of regional coverage and a burgeoning online media.
The development of online media in the regions happened differently. Where there were fewer resources and big business showed little interest in developing regional initiatives, the surge in activity came somewhat later – as soon as a new generation of politicians emerged in the regions and began fighting for power.
A vivid example is Kherson, a city in southern Ukraine and one of the country’s largest ports and shipbuilding centers. Serhii Nikitenko is the creator and longtime head of the regional online outlet Most (ukr. “The Bridge”), which has operated continuously, including during the Russian occupation of Kherson in 2022. He continues to report extensively from the front line, often putting his life at risk.
We explore what that experience has been like for him.
“The active surge in local media happened in two stages – the first in the early 1990s, and the second in the early 2000s, when local businesses began to have money. In Kherson, a city of 350,000 people, there were six television channels before the war; in Odesa, a city of more than one million, there were more than 20. The online media boom came around the turn of the 2010s. The first online media appeared earlier, in 2006-2008. But in the 2010s, it became a somewhat cheaper undertaking, and a great many media outlets appeared in Kherson – immediately a dozen or so different websites. As a rule, these media consisted of one, or at most two, people,” Nikitenko recalls.
“Gradually they grew. Some created separate editorial offices, some had teams capable of producing both news and investigations at the same time. We launched our website in 2012 during the parliamentary elections. And, you could say, we entered the market head on. We immediately decided that we would be an influential media outlet. If most media outlets were launched for unclear reasons, at best to extract money from local politicians and lawmakers, we immediately decided that we would be an influential media outlet. We took on everyone,” Nikitenko says.
Unexpectedly, because readers were hungry for information and finally had an opportunity to read extensively about local “political battles,” a media market emerged – websites grew in popularity, became players on the political scene in the regions, and often became political assets.
“Some of these were media outlets owned by politicians and lawmakers. There were cases when they were sold. There was Kherson Vist, for example, the Vist website, which was quite powerful. It was first sold to a city councilwoman, and she resold it to the then deputy head of the regional council, who is now the deputy head of the so-called ‘government’ of the part of Kherson region occupied by Russia. I think it was sold for either $15,000 or $20,000,” Nikitenko explains.
This was also facilitated by the fact that, for a long time, nobody wanted to invest in these websites – most of the advertising market was controlled by major television channels and radio stations, while internet advertising was generally not considered particularly important or valuable.
“The advertising market in Kherson, even as online advertising began developing in other regions, was almost non-existent. For a long time, we financed the website essentially out of our own pockets. We received grants for the website only very rarely. And until 2021, these were essentially side jobs for us. I worked there constantly, almost around the clock. In 2021, we began actively developing the advertising market. We started selling advertising very aggressively, going out to businesses, signing small contracts. And by around January 2022, Most had become fully self-sustaining. And then – the war started,” Nikitenko says.
The war changed everything. Kherson was quickly occupied, but nine months later it was liberated by the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Nikitenko and his team managed to produce truthful reports about life even in occupied Kherson. Naturally, journalists worked secretly. The Russians could throw someone into a “basement” or even kill them for any critical publication about them.
“When Kherson was occupied, we had one person left there, our correspondent… We tried not to let him go anywhere. He worked essentially underground and hardly ever left the house. But we collected all the information about prices, about what was happening. Plus, we worked extensively with our readers, who became our eyes and ears,” Nikitenko says.
A particular problem is working in territories that remain occupied. Here, Russian security services terrorize civilians and prevent them from transmitting information to “mainland” Ukraine.
“Journalistic standards do not work under such conditions. So, we are extremely limited when it comes to fact checking, and extremely limited in terms of information,” Nikitenko says.
“We have actually spelled this out in our policy and decided that the most important thing is to provide information, so we try to do that. But we try to work with official occupation documents. We download everything that is available there, process it, and work with it extensively. We have fewer and fewer contacts. Most often, we communicate with a person only after they have left,” Nikitenko explains.
Now, because of regular shelling and drone strikes on Kherson, Nikitenko says they have not reopened the editorial office in Kherson at all. He and a colleague work in Kherson on a rotational basis – they travel there, report from the city, and then return to Odesa.
In partthree and four, we will explore the economic and financial media, as well as investigations against Ukrainian presidents and those around them.