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

Kyiv Post staff writer Yuliana Romanyshyn has won the 2017 Alfred Friendly Press Partners fellowship, entitling her to work at an American newspaper and study at the University of Missouri School of Journalism for six months.

Romanyshyn, 25, will leave in mid-March and wants to focus on strengthening her skills as a data journalist. She has yet to be assigned a host newspaper.

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.

“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, network, and the global perspective required to execute my career ambitions.”

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.

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The six fellows in the 2016 Alfred Friendly Press Partners program included Kyiv Post staff writer Olena Goncharova, second from the right. (presspartners.org)

The Kyiv Post launched a fundraising appeal to pay for 25 percent of the estimated $30,000 in costs — salary, lodging and travel — for Romanyshyn over the six months.

The Kyiv Post GoFundMe campaign as of now stands at $6,635 — $865 short of its goal of $7,500.

Donations can be made at: https://www.gofundme.com/kyivpost2017

As Romanyshyn wrote in her successful application, learning is a two-way street and she plans to educate America 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 language and literature 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 raise awareness about Ukrainian issues, conducting round table. 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 and “implement all the expertise I will get, writing global and local stories, analyzing data sets, and making projects more visual and valuable for readers.”