Basic instinct: Deja vu for a newsman
Michel Willard writes: Kyiv post will remain a beacon of independent, honest reporting. 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.
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.
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
How can a news guy, turned political guy, turned PR and ad guy go back to being a news guy?
Phillipoff, the Kyiv Post staff and its readers.
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 willard@kyivpost.com.
Willard Marketing Monthly Is Going International
While we were taking a short summer hiatus, our world dramatically changed. Over the coming months, we'll be adding Middle East, London and Mumbai editions of our magazine.
This was brought about by an agreement with London-based All About Brands, with whom we have joined to beef up Willard's overall capabilities and reach.
Our magazine will follow All About Brands into each of its markets with fresh and localized content. It will be a challenge, but we have brought back the esteemed Scott Lewis to manage the project.
This is only one of Scott's new assignments. He will also direct training for Willard clients and for Willard staff, as well as serve as a senior PR counselor and creative person. He rejoins the leadership team as executive vice president.
As the magazine's publisher, I have a new role as well: I'll be a "roving ambassador" to the various All About Brands markets, helping propel this dynamic business into the future.
At Willard, we look forward to this exciting opportunity.
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In our last issue, we were heavily involved in a campaign to reduce the practice of psid press in Ukraine. We continue to focus on this problem, and hope not to end up as Don Quixote, tilting at windmills. We believe this is a noble goal, and that the problem is not so much with the press as with the companies that serve as enablers by purchasing press. We believe that buying press is definitely not a PR function, and impedes the development of press freedoms in this country. Additionally, we have held one Willard Roundtable on the topic.
If you would like to join us in this effort, please sign up on our Facebook page ("East European Companies Against Buying Press"). If you would like to discuss the issue and how to combat it with me, please call me at +380 (50) 355 9040. I look forward to hearing from you.
A Relevant Cause
Willard, the company, and Willard Marketing Monthly have searched diligently for a relevant cause with which to identify the company and the magazine. We have one in our back pocket, and we like it.
It has to do with an area of Corporate Social Responsibility that is important to every Ukrainian who would like to have a free and unfettered press. It has to do with the sad practice of commercial payment for news stories.
However, we take a somewhat different position. We believe the burden is not on the press but on the companies -including multinationals-that buy the press.
We know of corporations in virtually ever segment -otherwise good corporate citizens--who buy stories in Ukrainian press rather than trust what I call the basic theory of news-a good story that is news will rise to the top of the stack and get printed.
It would be hypocritical for us as a company not to acknowledge from the outset that in the 15-year history of Willard that, on occasion, we might have been guilty of such transgressions at the behest of a client. I have always had, as they say, plausible denial with a blanket rule of no purchased press. However, that's not good enough.
In the past, we have donated medical equipment to a hospital for older Ukrainians from revenue garnered from sold paintings. It wasn't a fortune.
We have supported a short-story contest and hosted a community website to promote public relations standards. I always like to think our seven-year experience publishing The Ukrainian Observer was a social cause. There were certainly no monetary benefits, and the community got a pretty good English language magazine that took on Ukrainian topics from culture, to history to current political debate.
However, having first started working with newspapers at age 19 and having spent a dozen years as a reporter and editor, this issue of attempting to stem paid stories is as close to my heart as my skin.
We have launched a Facebook page called "East European Companies Against Paid Prss." We will be soliciting supporters-not money. If anyone would like to talk to me directly about this, my telephone is (+380) 50 355 9040.