Mohammad Zahoor, our benevolent publisher, raised the newspaper from the ashes and has kept it going mightily for three years, but enough is enough.
Now, the paper’s future it is up to us.
I’m talking about you and me, your buddy in the next booth, and the fellow down the hall. All of us, together.
We have to do something or the newspaper will return to the dark days of 2008, when it was a shadow of what it is today.
Weak ad sales mean fewer journalists, much lower salaries
In a good month, the Kyiv Post still loses thousands of dollars, a topic Zahoor has discussed candidly at his regular Publisher’s Forums, luncheons attended by business leaders.
The imperative is to at least break even; the goal is to return the Kyiv Post to its historic profitability, which it enjoyed from 1995 until the crisis hit in the fall of 2008.
As CEO, I wholeheartedly endorse that premise, and the revenue picture has improved.
It has not been easy. I have knocked on the doors of at least 75 CEOs and general directors over the last eight months. A few have responded favorably.
Though the newspaper still has a strong heartbeat, it also has a troubling murmur that can only be fixed by serious surgery.
Today, the newspaper has 10 fewer newsroom employees, including writers and editors, than it did at the start of the year.
We were able to reduce through attrition mostly, but in the last month we laid off four journalists.
Currently, the newsroom contingent is 20 people, but will soon go down to 19. We de-emphasized the Ukrainian website at www.kyivpost.ua. We tightened the newswire budget.
The current staff is doing now what it has always done – working diligently to put out the best English-language newspaper possible and keep www.kyivpost.com humming with news, seven days a week, and close to 24 hours a day.
We do have a growth strategy in place; but, by definition, turnarounds are incremental, long-term efforts.
We also cut salaries drastically effective April 1, a move that would bring the disapproval of most management consultants.
The accepted practice is to do with fewer people instead. But we need to get a newspaper out, and we need to make the English-language website work for us. That takes people power. It is not about pushing buttons.
No one, least of all our valued readers, wants a return to 16-page issues printed on paper so poor it is hardly legible.
Looking into my crystal ball, I figure we have a few months to cut losses to zero – a task akin to stopping a freight train on a dime.
However, I’ve assured Zahoor that we will do what it takes, while keeping the newspaper a vibrant publication that people are anxious to read.
A newspaper is more than paper and ink. It stands for something, not the least of which is the free flow of ideas. It is the guardian of the peoples’ right to know.
It is a lamp that sheds light into the darkest of corners – and we have a duty to keep that lamp burning brightly.
Some feel that a newspaper is nearly a living thing, with a heart and a soul. I wouldn’t argue.
In recent weeks, we have made significant progress. If reasonable revenue goals are met, we are within shouting distance of single-digit losses.
That’s the good news. While revenue is up 33 percent over our last fiscal year, we need, at a minimum, to double that figure.
Therein is the problem.
The community, by and large, simply hasn’t supported what I like to call the world’s window on Ukraine. They are quick to praise its efforts, but largely keep their purse strings tied.
There are notable exceptions, such as Danone, the European Business Association, TNK-BP, Raiffeisen Bank Aval, Sanofi, the legal and accounting community, moving companies, international organizations and governments, as well as some restaurants and nightclubs.
No one, of course, should advertise unless it is in the interest of their government, company or professional firm, but I try to understand why the support is soft for an institution that has upheld the banner of a free and independent press in Ukraine for nearly 17 years.
I believe that a vibrant Kyiv Post is in most companies’ vital interest, whether they want to ensure a free press, want to move cars off the lot or to sell professional services.
After all, no other voice stands up for the multinational community like the Kyiv Post.
No other English-language publication has the heart to take on the power structure when it strays off course. The Kyiv Post is also in companies’ economic interest, as it is thoroughly read by a target audience of intelligent, well-educated, income-secure expats and Ukrainians.
Publisher Zahoor has done his part in keeping the Kyiv Post’s flame alive. Now it is our turn.
Kyiv Post CEO Michael Willard can be reached at [email protected]
