From Journalist to Editor, from Print to Digital, from Ukraine to the USA...

olesya80

olesya80's Journal

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• 2011 VOF Week 2

I always dreamt to be a journalist. My first article was published in the newspaper when I was 13. Since then I was published once in a while and became a full-time working journalist in 2001. I tried to work on the radio, but then realized that print media was my real passion and decided to stick to it.

I worked in regional and national newspapers. I really loved what I did. My favorite part of my job was that I was really changing life of other people. The biggest reward was when issues raised in my articles were solved after they were published in the newspaper. I also liked to write about fun stuff as since these articles brought smiles on people’s faces.
Eventually I became a publishing editor in the daily newspaper of my hometown. Editing the daily newspaper was very challenging and sometimes tough, but also very interesting and exciting.

After some time being an editor I realized I wanted something more than that. I wanted to further my education and started to think about graduate programs. I realized that my country does not have media management degrees and I applied to Fulbright program to study media management in the USA. Thus in 2009 I became a graduate student in Professional Media and Media Management Program in Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, USA.

During two years of studies my thoughts about media changed a bit. I realized I like new media more and started to move in that direction. I took several classes in new media and multimedia and studied HTML/CSS. My master’s final project is the website I created out of scratch www.mediazori.com. I wanted to make my website a tutorial for journalists who want to switch to new media from the traditional one.

I have got my MS degree in May, 2011. Now I am back in Ukraine – looking for a full-time job and freelancing at the same time. I can see that Ukraine is behind the USA when it comes to media questions. While print media is moving online in America, Ukrainian newspapers are still not sure they need to put their assets into digital media. Another issue is that Ukrainian media managers do not know exactly how to create multimedia content and how to use social media that much. That is why Ukrainian media is still half way to online development. From my side I try to educate media people I know in Ukraine why they need new media and how they can use it for their benefit. I am sure they will understand everything eventually.

I was very happy that I found such a source as World Pulse since this is the community for such women as me. I think we all think the same and we all can collaborate. It is really great there are women from all over the world here. Taking one step at a time we can change things. So let’s do that!