If we are lucky, we are sometimes confronted by our past in a positive way, one that goes beyond nostalgia for the gauzy good old days.
That has been the situation these first few weeks as chief executive officer of the Kyiv Post.
There is a certain deja vu in joining up with Ukraine’s leading English-language publication.
My first real job was working city desk for the Orlando Sentinel, back before there was a Disney World in that city. I was 19 (now 66), and it was the mid-1960s.
This was in the waning days of the clanking Linotype, the machine that set hot type, back when news copy was carried from the newsroom to composing room by pneumatic tube.
I once even heard a night editor shout the movie-like line: “Stop the presses.”
On that occasion, a long-sought fugitive had been cornered in a shootout with Orlando police. The paper was held just long enough to get in a hurried 300-word account. It was an exciting night, even – one supposes – for the fugitive, to a point. He was killed.
My charge from publisher Mohammad Zahoor is to make a great newspaper even greater and to make it profitable.
I remember walking out of the newspaper building around 1 a.m., hearing the roar of the press and taking in the wonderful but acrid aroma of printer’s ink.
At the time, we didn’t call ourselves journalists.
We were newspaper men and women or reporters.
That scene, however, will never be repeated.
Cold type replaced hot type in a bow to technology, convenience and economy. Then came the computer age, and the likelihood was that the printing press would be located far from the newsroom.
If someone were to yell, “Stop the presses” today, they would get quizzical stares. No, more than that, they would be considered delusional.
Time passes. I went on to work for the last afternoon newspaper to increase its price from five cents to 10 cents, the Tampa Times. Soon thereafter, it folded.
By that time, I was covering politics and writing a country music column for United Press International in Nashville, Tennessee.
If someone were to yell, “Stop the presses” today, they would get quizzical stares. No, more than that, they would be considered delusional.
Much later, I went into politics, working as a top adviser to U.S. Senate Democratic Leader Robert C. Byrd, and later for Gov. John D. Rockefeller IV in his successful quest to win a Senate seat.
For most of the last 25 years, I have owned ad and PR firms. Today, the news business is functionally much easier than when I started out, yet far more demanding.
Where once you had deadlines, the electronic age has brought a deadline every millisecond, 24 hours a day. It made UPI’s slogan: “A deadline every minute” sounds quaint.
It also brought competition from anyone with access to a modem. Personally, I want my news brought to me by a real journalist, one who can separate fact from fiction, and who is sufficiently responsible to present both sides of opposing discussions. I don’t want or need armchair philosophy.
I also want honesty, and this is what the Kyiv Post has represented over these 15 years – refusing to take money for stories, refusing to go on press junkets, and upholding a key word in its motto – independence.
Will there be changes in the Kyiv Post? The short answer is yes. My charge from publisher Mohammad Zahoor is to make a great newspaper even greater and to make it profitable. I don’t see the two as mutually exclusive, and neither does Zahoor.
Over a relatively short period, I will make recommendations to Zahoor after thoroughly looking at all aspects of the publication, and after discussions with senior editor Brian Bonner, former CEO Jim Phillipoff, the Kyiv Post staff and its readers.
How can a news guy, turned political guy, turned PR and ad guy go back to being a news guy?
As for Willard, the company, it is in good hands with Olga Willard as CEO (now for more than a year), with veteran Tania Spiridonova excelling as president of advertising, and with the very creative Scott H. Lewis as managing director of training. I remain chairman, but with no day-to-day management responsibilities.
How can a news guy, turned political guy, turned PR and ad guy go back to being a news guy?
It’s not that difficult: Just put one foot in front of the other, and head for home.
Michael Willard was appointed CEO of the Kyiv Post on July 18. The veteran marketing, public relations and advertising executive will also remain chairman of The Willard Group, a Kyiv-based public relations and marketing firm with offices in Moscow and Istanbul. He can be contacted at [email protected].
