Kyiv Post staff writer Yuliana Romanyshyn has won a 2017 fellowship from Alfred Friendly Press Partners. She will work at an American newspaper and also study at the University of Missouri School of Journalism during a six-month period starting in March.
Romanyshyn, a 25-year-old native of Ternopil, wants to focus on strengthening her skills as a data journalist.
“With the set of skills in data journalism I’ll gain in the United States, I will be able to do comprehensive data stories and apply Western practices to the development of journalism in Ukraine,” Romanyshyn said. “I have realized the power of journalism. For more than two years, I’ve been developing as a digital journalist, and recently found myself heading in the high-tech direction of data visualizing. The Alfred Friendly Press Partners program, like no other, can help me reach the next level of knowledge, skills and the global perspective required to reach my career ambitions.”
The Kyiv Post conducted a successful crowdfunding campaign this year that raised $7,560 – about 25 percent of the costs for a single journalist. In one month, 94 people contributed, beating last year’s GoFundMe total of $5,350.
The Kyiv Post is in its fourth year of partnership with the program started by Alfred Friendly (1911-1983), a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist and Washington Post managing editor from 1955-1965. The program is administered in Columbia, Missouri, home to one of the best journalism schools in America.
The three previous Kyiv Post fellows in this program are: Olena Goncharova in 2016, Oksana Grytsenko in 2015 and Anastasia Forina in 2014. Goncharova and Grytsenko worked at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Forina worked for the Chicago Tribune.
Romanyshyn, who has yet to be assigned a host newspaper, said she also wants to teach Americans about Ukraine. “I’ll contribute with my experience of the current situation in Ukraine and post-Soviet countries to global understanding of my home country at the world arena,” she said.
She has been a staff writer at the Kyiv Post since January 2015. She is a graduate of Ivano Franko National University of Lviv with an M.A. degree in Japanese and Ukrainian language and literature.
In December, she completed a six-week New Diplomacy Fellowship with Spiegel Online in Germany.
“There, I enhanced my skills in data visualization and storytelling and raised awareness about Ukrainian issues, conducting a roundtable. Today, I am using German best practices working on a project about open data,” she said.
The Alfred Friendly Foundation has trained more than 300 journalists from nearly 80 countries since 1984. The program chose Romanyshyn from among four Kyiv Post applicants.
David Reed, program director of the Alfred Friendly Press Partners, said the foundation is committed to strengthening Ukraine’s democratic future, which “is closely linked with the future of independent media in Ukraine.”
After her fellowship, Romanyshyn plans to return to the Kyiv Post to use “all the expertise I will get, writing global and local stories, analyzing data sets and making projects more visual and valuable for readers.”
