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'Media survival in Ukraine' | RISJ seminar with Jakub Parusinski of the Kyiv Independent | Otter.ai

'Media survival in Ukraine' | RISJ seminar with Jakub Parusinski of the Kyiv Independent

Reuters Institute59min

Caithlin Mercer

00:08

Hello, and thank you for joining the global journalism seminars at the Reuters Institute. At the start of this year, today's guests Yakko Parazynski was helping his former colleagues launch a new English language news network, the Kyiv independent and he's raised close to 2 million pounds for them to date. In a mediocre and immediate career spanning 13 years, Jakob has worked as a journalist, a consultant and a media manager. He was editor and CEO of the PF post during the Maidan uprising of 2014 that toppled Viktor Yanukovych. And he's gone on to complete an MBA at INSEAD in France, and worked for McKinsey in London before founding the fix and genomics media, a consultancy that specializes in helping outlets monetize their content. He also consults as a lecturer on media business at the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga, where he's joining us from today, and is current chairman of the board of the Media Development Foundation in Ukraine. You might say that yeah, cribs Korea was preparing him for this moment in March this year as Putin's tanks rolled into Ukraine, he swung into action to ensure staff at the fix were safely evacuated, and Kyiv independent journalists had everything they needed to continue ground reporting. He didn't stop there. He then set up a crowdfunding initiative to support other Ukrainian media outlets through the Media Development Foundation, raising 3 million pounds and counseling. Jakob, we are so honored to have you with us today. Welcome.

Jakub Parusinski

01:38

Thank you, thank you so much for having me really thrilled to be here and to have the opportunity to talk about what's happening in the Ukrainian media space.

Caithlin Mercer

01:47

Wonderful. I wanted to actually, we're going to do something that we don't normally get in a global journalism seminar. We're going to do a little bit of breaking news, because you've got a new initiative that's launched today. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that?

Jakub Parusinski

02:05

Absolutely. So one of the challenges that Ukrainian media are facing, is that following the war that advertising markets have collapsed, but that's not a problem that's just confronting the Ukrainian media. It's also a problem for a while now for Bella Russian media, many of which are operating in exile. And hence, we sort of joined with our partners at the sort of pillar Russian media group infoPoint media network and created a joint sales house that represents I think right now 15, Ukrainian and Belarusian media and the idea is to represent them in front of international organizations, global brands and make sure that over the coming months and years, there's also a marketing and advertising markets to fall back on and not just donor support keeping the region's media alive.

Caithlin Mercer

02:59

What did some of the centralized services they'll be able to get from that?

Jakub Parusinski

03:04

Well, the To be honest, it's really not that complicated, at least on the high level. It's really about pulling all of these media together and being going out and pitching them to global brands. So the problem is, if I'm an individual Ukrainian media, I'm probably too small to go and talk to marketing managers, you know, in London or Toronto or San Francisco. But all of these together, we're talking about 20 25 million users many of whom are IT specialists, creative specialists, engineers, etc. So quite an interesting demographic as well. And you know, that sort of gets us into the room with a lot of these big brands, obviously, we need to make sure that they can deliver as well. So you know, it's helping with production of native advertising, commercial products, all of that kind of stuff, making sure that you know, that that somehow save the commercial side of things for the region's video.

Caithlin Mercer

04:05

Was it difficult getting people to agree to join together in this way?

Jakub Parusinski

04:10

Normally, I think it would have been a disaster, because usually when you tried to pull media together and sort of, you know, in joint efforts, I mean, everybody sort of says that, yes, of course cooperation, but then you don't really get much commitment. I think what has been what offered an exceptional situation is that one, you know, it's run by an external partner, right? So having these sort of the Belarusian Media Group front and center made it easier for all the Ukrainian media to sign on because it's not one of their competitors who's sort of running this. And to it's just the extraordinary circumstances right now. I mean, that look, everyone is anything that can be helpful, people are ready to jump in. So we have high hopes and you know, looking forward, hopefully this will also be an opportunity to sort of work on market level solutions. You know, whether it's practices in terms of data, I mean, now Switzerland, Czech Republic, Czech, yeah, sorry, are looking at single logins. You know, having a group of media that represent the bulk of the media market is an opportunity to do that, but for now, we need to get them some commercial projects through the door and make sure that they're funded,

Caithlin Mercer

05:26

right, what is the name of the group? Info point agency, info point agency, will they be sharing their data, their reader data and Will are there any kind of protections around

Jakub Parusinski

05:38

so it's it's difficult because most of the Belarusian media operate, essentially in exile. And so when a Belarusian you know, all the ones who have been, you know, deemed what do they call it enemies of the state? There's a technical term that I've now forgotten but whenever sort of Lukashenka decides he doesn't like some media, it's sort of banned. And then the problem is people can only access it via VPN. So whenever you open the data, it turns out that, you know, 60% of your audience's is from Zimbabwe, and then 30% is from the Netherlands and you're like, well, this doesn't make any sense. So, but there are initiatives to gather that data to use that data. Obviously, we'll be trying to make that data workable for the commercial partners, because that's one thing. But given that the fix and sort of you know, I would say our cultural DNA is very much about increasing access and availability of reliable data. We'll be happy to work with anybody who wants to work with that and see what can be done. So definitely some exciting things going forward. as well.

Caithlin Mercer

06:53

I wanted to switch gears slightly and ask what may sound like a stupid question, but I I have a feeling the answer might be quite interesting. How does operate in a media business differ when you're doing it in a war zone versus normal? Human everyday life?

Jakub Parusinski

07:14

So I think that's a that's a very important question. Just maybe to note that I'm coming at this from the perspective of a CFO from Kyiv independent and you know, an editor at the fix. My job is, levels but less stressful than that of all got the chief editor and that in the CEO you know, I do not envy them. For them. It's been it's been orders of magnitude more challenging, but it is very different. I would say, the main thing, from from, I guess, from my perspective, and sort of from a managerial perspective, is that you have to you have to plan with a lot of redundancy, if that makes sense. So both in terms of volumes and more on the tech side, you know, we've got fantastic partners with Duke agency. I need to give them a shout out because they've been working around the clock for the last two months. Just just keeping the site up and running. I mean, anytime something loud happens. Volume just spikes like crazy. But it's also about operationally you know, people need to move around. It's very difficult to get to go from point A to point point D. In Ukraine, you need to make sure that they have you know, especially in the early days, there was a question of like, in how many different locations do we have cash? Right, because what if the banking sector, sort of the payment system just collapses? Because that was a very real possibility. And to be frank, it's kind of amazing how Ukraine has managed to keep everything online and operating virtually without any downtime. But you know, you need to have all of these redundant plans to sort of keep operating. Otherwise, I mean, it's it's very easy to fall apart. Have you switched?

Caithlin Mercer

09:23

Have you switched to paying your journalists in cash? Or are you keeping things online for now?

Jakub Parusinski

09:29

I think overwhelmingly online i don't want to say that there weren't any I think there was some sort of here's some cash for expenses and things like that, but it was very minor. To be honest, yeah, as I said, the the banking system with health that's despite very intense you know, prepared, trained, sort of Russian attacks on the on the sort of the, the whole IT system of Ukraine on every level government banks, you know, online services, all of that was under attack and somehow managed to or not somehow thanks to incredible work preparation and so forth. managed to survive. I think one thing that is kind of interesting because also that, you know, the role that that crypto has played. Not so much for the cave independent although we do gather some donations in crypto more so I would say for the rest of the media sector, as well as the government itself. So a lot of the civil society organizations, a lot of the sort of even regional media opened accounts in crypto and especially in the first days of the war, when one of the first things we did was open crypto wallets, to be able to gather donations. Actually quite a bit of that went through and went directly to Ukraine, you know, within a matter of, sometimes minutes, often hours whereas traditional banking would have been significantly longer. So there's quite an interesting piece to sort of dig into there and in the role that crypto is playing. Yeah. Who would have thought right,

Caithlin Mercer

11:17

not me. That sounds like a feature article waiting someone's right. I was listening to on the topic of those donations as a thing to an aid worker yesterday saying there's this this concept in crisis management that you have an eight week honeymoon period where the public is motivated and helping and giving and then it just kind of flatlines and you've got to use those eight weeks to get ready. Has that been your experience? I mean, now that your 10th week?

Jakub Parusinski

11:49

Yes, absolutely. So I would say that there's even it's a little bit more nuanced. So you know, it's actually one of the things that that that I think was quite helpful here is that uh, personally I had gone through my done the revolution before. And while honestly when I think back to that as the I mean, that was pretty intense. You know, the a lot of people fought lost their lives. It was, it was a it was quite a, you know, in many ways, a traumatic experience for a lot of the Ukrainian nation. And as bad as that was, it seems like child's play compared to what is happening. Now. But it does sort of help you inform and it does give you a certain certain amount of preparation. And one thing that we that we discovered during my dance specifically and which I think carries to all sorts of crisises is that the honeymoon window, the sort of the period when people really care. It works, but there is something that can break it, which is when the situation becomes radically worse. And so specifically, my dad was sort of this constant escalation, where the situation got worse and worse every couple of weeks, which sort of kept people engaged and you know, it was it ultimately what brought down the downfall of Yanukovych, which was an amazingly foolish strategy from his perspective. So So that's, that's in terms of the long side of it. But looking at the short end of the sideway week period, I think there is a real eight weeks is sort of for standard operating standard operations, when we're looking at a crisis of this magnitude. Really, the first 4872 hours. This is what I would call is kind of a magical period when just it's, it's really all institutions, or at least this was my experience is that all institutions that are supposed to work on a given area in a given area work on a given sector, day essentially break down because nobody has planned for this. And what happens is, people become people, which is which is quite quite unique. People are no longer just representatives of whatever organization they are. They are at the very core of them, you know, humans who are making often very moral, emotional or sort of, you know, other judgment based decisions. That plays a big role. And I think it meant a lot for us as well in terms of being able to rally support for Ukrainian media because during that time, you can show up anywhere and as long as you make a reasonable argument that this is how we should sell things. This is the way that it will work. After that bureaucracy starts to come into play. There's still about two weeks when a lot of things can move around. There's a lot of flexibility and people really, really care. And after that, it really drops off and then after eight weeks, it's gone.

Caithlin Mercer

15:05

Yeah. Would you be able to, I mean, within those first few weeks, you were very successful. In getting the Media Development Fund. The crisis fund going would you be able to give us kind of an overview of what came in and when what it was spent on?

Jakub Parusinski

15:28

Yes, absolutely. So there, it was. A lot of different partners a lot of different sources of money, by the way, happy to sort of show that a little bit more visually. Yeah. So so so this is kind of it's a before sort of jumping into that. I think my my main point here is that essentially, the first two weeks for us were like a giant mapping exercise and sort of, you know, because on the one hand you have, you know, hundreds 1000s of people and then dozens or, or, you know, actually more than dozens organizations that are ready to support. And then you have, on the other side, a tremendous amount of media that have needs. So I think in the first 24 hours, you know, we used whatever resources we had, just to send out, I think it was about 60,000 euros at the time to almost 50 different media organizations with a very simple principle of, you know, do we Is this a real media organization, right, like, that's the level of due diligence. Are they not pro Kremlin, and does their real needs sound? reasonable, and essentially, it was making decisions within a 15 minute, half an hour, one hour timeframe so that people could get money immediately to buy fuel to buy whatever medical equipment, whatever they needed, essentially, as long as it was within a reasonable threshold, most of the transactions were about, you know, between one and 3000 euros. That was kind of immediate. Since then, we've also we've also purchased distributed about 600,000 in equipment. I'm using a lot of approximations because there's a lot of numbers and they move all the time. That's you know, that's that's about three and a half tonnes which is actually extremely relevant when you're moving equipment. You know, it's all about size and weight, and how are you going to process all of it and move it through a country that has sort of, you know, at that point, like 3000 checkpoints on all of the roads and you need to make sure to move things along. There's been about half a million in direct donations to larger media as well, to sort of keep them going, and then the rest of the money is sort of spread out over the coming months. But as I mentioned, would be happy to sort of spend a moment just to give a

Caithlin Mercer

18:15

little bit of background I think it would be really interesting. And just a caveat. These are media organizations from what would normally be a highly competitive media industry. Correct. This is these are not people who would normally be cooperating.

Jakub Parusinski

18:32

Well, absolutely, I mean, it's not like they all have knives out and you know, never working together. But But what what you need to understand and what I think makes this sort of the support for Ukrainian media really important is that this was a highly competitive, highly professional media industry that was built through sweat, tears and blood over three decades. And when you look at sort of the level of free press and the performance of Free Press in Ukraine versus Belarus, Russia, and all of the other countries in the region, this was actually one of the places where things had really worked out. There were a lot of very good quality media. There are still a lot of very good quality media. Many of them were financially sustainable, which is also quite unique in the sort of the C region. And so yeah, the fact that we were able to sort of step in, as well as many other donors, to help them survive is very important, because at the end of the day, what we see hear consistently from Putin speeches from the sort of messages that are coming out of the Kremlin is that this war is also about destroying Ukraine's culture. It's not just about taking over it is really a war that is designed to erase Ukraine like the they don't even you know, the recognize that this this country this culture has a is sort of legitimate has a right to exist, and media play a key role in carrying that culture. Right. So, you know, making sure that there's they survive was was also an essential part of, of sort of what was driving us so we'll

Caithlin Mercer

20:24

look at some charts. You know, it's my,

Jakub Parusinski

20:26

alright. Fantastic. So, yeah, I don't want to go through too many slides, but just to give you sort of a little bit of a sense. So look, the first thing is the VIX was not designed for war reactions, for four for sort of being a war operator. But I think what what we were doing beforehand was actually quite useful because the idea was to have a sort of a research and a media publishing hub that would, you know, the overarching goal was sort of to increase the availability of reliable data. That turned out to be very useful because when the crisis hit, we had data about all of the different participants. We knew the market. The Media Development Foundation, for example, has a network of 100 over 100 sort of regional media and you know, the fix has been analyzing that data publishing about it. The other thing, which was quite important is that the organization has deep roots in Ukraine. So myself, I'm Polish, but my wife, my daughter, our Ukrainian, many of our team members, are either from Ukraine or still based in Ukraine. And so, you know, for us, it was personal. The second thing that I would really like to emphasize is that this was not a solo effort. It was actually the effort of there was the fix. There was the Media Development Foundation. Which is a Ukrainian NGO. There was our we Europe, which is a Brussels based media, NGO, and publisher, the cave independent health and genomics, which is a media consultancy, and what was really important here is that on the morning of the 24th when we all were woke up because there was a strong relationship between the different organizations, there wasn't really much of a sort of transaction cost to pull all of our resources and say like, there is, you know, there is one important mission for us now and that is to help Ukrainian media however, we can. The what we tried to do very quickly, which is kind of like what the, the fix has been designed to do is structure the problem. So immediately break it down into immediate needs, short term needs and mid to long term needs. And by immediate needs, we mean, you have two hours, right? Solve it. That's the sort of the tempo where we needed to react short term meant we have a couple of days to make a decision mid to long term. I mean, when the moment when we started to look three months ahead, that was as the long term plan. That was really a sort of a big sigh of relief, I think for that for the whole organization. This The other thing was to even try to break this down further. Because you want to worry about 24 people working on this, a couple of volunteers as well as people from all of the different organizations. And while you know, everyone sort of pays a lot of attention to the fundraising part and sort of raising the money that's sort of where you get the loud headlines. This was about, you know, 10% of our efforts. Most of it was going to the other workstreams and the way that we structured our work streams was you know, between donation of equipment. The micro grants, the transport and relocation, setting up alternative offices, a survival fund, and then this sort of sustainability support, which is infoPoint, which has come to fruition just now. One thing that was really important is the whole time whenever you structure something, it's not just about having a list of what needs to happen, but also having prioritization. Like if you need to drop everything, what is the one thing or the two things that you that you hang on to, you know, in the first kind of three days of the war when everyone was telling us you know, the Russians are going to take over cave in you know, in three days time in four days time. They're going to capture the whole country. You know, as as my my colleague, guy from from genomics said, Well, you know, okay, what can we do in those four days? Right? If we have four days, how do we make the most most of them? And so, initially, the two priorities for us were

Jakub Parusinski

25:09

equipment getting as much PPE, that's that's vests that bulletproof vests, helmets, tactical glasses, emergency bandages, ifex, all that kind of stuff into different spaces around Ukraine, because there was this fear that okay, you might get it into a city or you might sort of get it to central Ukraine. But what if the city where you need to get it to is surrounded. I think what we need to remember is now, you know, it seems quite distant, but there was a moment where there were Russian troops and fighting, all around cave, basically on every single one of the directions. And there was a real sort of fear that we're looking at another siege of Sarajevo, that the city will be closed down and there will be no way to get in or out. So what we were trying to do is move as much equipment as possible to different parts of the country. That was a very painful process. I'll get back to them in a bit. And then the second thing was finding housing and helping relocate journalists who were we expected going to be leaving Ukraine in large amounts, turns out not that many left and many of the ones who left returned very quickly afterwards, right, thanks to the Ukrainian Armed Forces who managed to keep the Russian troops at bay. But but you know, you need to sort of plan as well for the worst case scenario, not just for the best case scenario. I think just to highlight a couple of things. So a lot of the support came from a lot of sort of classical donors, but also donors that don't typically give money to to media so for example, the arch well Foundation, which is from the British Royals, I think that technically in the US, but that was you know, we had that one headline. One morning that you know, Megan Markel. As sort of designated funds for Ukrainian media which sort of cheered everybody up the but it was also about organizations that could move fast right and that was the sort of the the main thing was always at what speed can you deliver? And here I think there was something that was quite interesting, which I think was also unique to the current crisis, or at least I haven't seen something like it, which is the incredible role really, I would say fundamental role that other publishers had from across Europe. I mean, mostly Northern Europe, as you can see from the from the map, but here just to highlight a couple of examples, you know, I think it was day two, that sifted came in was like, you know, we don't really know what to do, but we imagined that you need money. We're going to donate a portion of our subscription revenues. Which was just fantastic. Because, you know, we had never thought of publishers actually stepping in and being a support vehicle because, you know, you have this whole donor ecosystem and then you know, the local came and was like, you know, we're ready to send you money. And what was great about that was that was extremely flexible money from people who are also media managers. So, while you know, I have nothing but thanks to all the donors and all the philanthropic organizations that are supporting Ukrainian media. A lot of them are not run by media managers. So it's a little bit difficult for them to say, you know, what is actually helpful? What Yeah, and a lot of them have some kind of bureaucracy and they need to work around that. And that's frankly, not something that is super helpful when you need to move at extreme speeds. So I think the role that other publishers played in coming and supporting was absolutely you know, phenomenal. The other two that I would just mention quickly is because of bok choy was one of the first and also played a key role in mobilizing other publishers so as soon as they sent the money, they started calling their friends in other countries. And then of course, Axel Springer, which sort of came in and just decided to donate half a million euros which immediately went to bulletproof vests and helmets that have been sent all across the front lines of, of Ukraine, which which was just a tremendous amount of support. The obviously you know, Guardian with the coverage and all of the other coverage that was that was really helpful as well. A, the thing that that I think was really important is,

Jakub Parusinski

30:09

as I mentioned, the it's really the first sort of couple of days and then the first two weeks that play a big role. So I think when we look at the, the, the, the sort of the funding as it came in, probably 75% of all the money came in through the first or maybe two thirds of the money came through in the first two weeks, right, and then the 1/3 over the next six weeks. What was where we got lucky, in a sense was that one we had all of these organizations coming together, and two, we quite quickly got the message out. So what that meant is, you know, for most of the media if you want to start a GoFundMe in the middle of a war, or an ecological crisis, GoFundMe immediately shuts that down. Because opportunistic anyone might be coming along and sort of saying, Look, I want to create a fund or whatever. So they they take a very dim view of things that are open in the first two hours. What was great was that the cave independent already had a GoFundMe, we already had a sort of a way to reach out to them. And you know, within a few hours of the first GoFundMe being shut down, we were talking to people we had a VIP sort of account manager and GoFundMe and we were talking with them directly to be able to unblock this. And that's what sort of gave us you know, two weeks Headstart over everybody else in the in the media sector. The other sort of one very last kind of comment is, look throughout this whole period, I would say that at least half of our resources went to managing logistics. And this is something that is an absolute nightmare. And it's it's when I look to the way that a lot of the organizations are thinking about logistics or a lot of so this is how everyone kind of sees it. Like you get stuff to Warsaw, move it along, get it to k and then send it to the frontlines. This is what it looks like in reality. So you get it to Warsaw, you have four customs checkpoints to get through. Each of them requires a different document and you have to get it across the border, again, for different sort of documents. You break it up, you send it all over the place. I think at the peak, we had sort of, you know, seven, eight people who are working almost full time just managing the logistics. And when you look at you know, in parallel sort of people who are coming in, we want to buy like 100 vests and ship them. It's like, No, you're not, that's just not going to happen. Because one of the vests in Europe were bought up in the first 48 hours, so you need to ship them from from China. And then the second thing is it's really difficult process to sort of manage all of this along the way and honestly, that's something that we've we're kind of stepping out of and everyone is sleeping better because it's it's just been an incredible pain. Look, what did we learn along the way? When when all of this sort of chaotic when all these chaotic things are happening. Decentralized decision making, everyone needs to be able to move forward. There's no opportunity to kind of check things but make sure to have internal communications very robust. Everyone needs to be up to date on what's happening externally keep messages but now a simple but loud. So which is why also we put the fixes the umbrella even though there were lots of these organizations, actually supporting the effort. We just wanted to keep things as simple as possible. You know, prioritize ruthlessly I think that's that's kind of obvious, but you know, when in doubt, just solve whatever's in front of you. Yeah, right. If you're, if you're lost, if there's a million things that are raining down on your head, just solve the thing that's, that's right in front.

Jakub Parusinski

34:06

The other thing which is really important, is have as much data available as possible and I think here we have a real systemic problem in the media sector, not just in Ukraine, I would say all over the world is the the quality of data that is available about media is just absolutely I mean it's really sad to say there's almost nothing and you know, that also gave, I think the fix of big headstart in the sense that we have been doing research. We knew all of these media, we knew what their budgets were, we knew how much they would need for different activities, where they were based where their teams were, I mean, all of that is something that would have taken weeks to sort of compensate and then finally, you know, things will break people systems communication, build redundancy. It's a huge psychological pressure and people will crack and it's just normal. And then the other thing is, don't follow the news. Right, like, wet like spend two hours at the end of the day or in the morning, just to be up to date, because you need to be up to date or take like small half hour breaks. But if you get lost in Doom scrolling, you wake up three days later in sweat in a panic and it's just, you know, no one's benefiting from that especially you if you actually have to get stuff done. Outsource following the news to one person on the team and let everyone else work.

Caithlin Mercer

35:32

I've got a couple of questions coming in from the seminar room downstairs about this topic. I do also want to speak about P of independent at some point but let's go first to Guillermo is question. You guys. There we go. And Guillermo is from Uruguay and he's got a question about what happens next. Thank you for being here.

Speaker 1

36:03

The oneness is still ongoing. So maybe it's too early to ask, but do you think this wave of collaboration and this mindset of collaboration between media will stick after the war is over? Or just something for a spring? Huawei?

Jakub Parusinski

36:22

I mean, for sure. It will not stay to the level that it is now. And I think we need to be ready for that. And I think we need to not be too sad about it. There's this kind of thing whenever you know something really horrible happens. It brings out the best in people and they all try to get together and work together and and you know and then sort of life becomes normal and we start to prioritize our the needs of our own needs the needs of our organization. That's okay, we need to be ready for that. But ideally, you know, the way that we're thinking about it is, you know, what do we really want to save what versus what is that? You know, we'll go back to being our competitive selves and that's okay. Right. And, actually, just just maybe, from a personal reflection, I remember from the revolution I mean, there's a lot of PTSD coming to all the folks involved here. The end, you know, some people it shows up soon, some people it will show up months later. Personally, I remember this being one of the saddest things is when you know, the corporation kind of starts to break down and you're like, well, but we had all of these great values, but I think it's okay, I think we can you know, mourn that quietly. But also try to keep some areas of collaboration going but really prioritize what is it that we want to keep alive? Where is the cooperation important versus where can we let go?

Caithlin Mercer

38:06

There was another question in the room from Simon from the Australian Broadcast Corporation. And I will let Simon ask his question

Jakub Parusinski

38:19

Oh, how are you? I was just wondering you mentioned in your presentation that there was a challenge involved in keeping servers up and migrating things and, and the skills around that. I just, it just made me wonder whether there's been any big donations from tech companies of infrastructure or skill to help in in that process. Actually, yes. I didn't want to go into too much detail because there was a whole workstream on that. And I don't know if technically they okayed the fact that we can talk about it openly. But let me put it this way. All of the people that you'd expect, all of the usual suspects stepped up in a massive way. And I don't remember the exact numbers but I think in the first couple of weeks, we did like 15 We supported sort of as a coordination platform between the the actual service providers and the media themselves, I think like 15, different server migrations, and then debugging, cybersecurity support and all of that. The other thing I didn't mention as well, which I think definitely can and should do a shout out is Twilio which actually put together a chatbot so if you're on Facebook, on Telegram, I think Viber I want to say Viber, which are the main sort of platforms that you can use. You have access to all of these different types of support just through this automated chatbot with to kind of communications managers helping out sort of troubleshoot stuff. So yeah, tech support was really I mean, fantastic. Very quick. Yeah.

Caithlin Mercer

40:13

I'll follow up on that with something perhaps along the same lines a couple of weeks ago, we were talking about InfoSec. And without compromising systems, are there any are there any things that you are there? Are you coming under attack and perhaps that's the obvious question, and are there any lessons that you've learned that you'd be able to share with us?

Jakub Parusinski

40:36

Yeah, so I mean, the quick answer is yes. The this was a huge stress both in terms of attack but also in terms of the the infrastructure. So you know, the, the cave independence traffic grew, you know, 10,000 times 100,000 times, right. Remember, like we were a startup launched like four months ago or five months ago now. This was far from being kind of a super established media even though it had this track record of the TF post and, you know, it's not like it was completely green. The, I think, look, there's there's more and more sort of ready made solutions in the sense of big media need to be able to afford them. What was also great is virtually every single tech solution provider that I know either incredibly discounted or made media or make their services free for Ukrainian entities. So we were able to benefit from that. The other thing where, you know, I mean, the best advice you can get in life is to be lucky. And I think in many ways, we were lucky here. But one of the really important ones is before the worst started, actually cave independent managed to secure an investor who is an IT startup, sort of investor in the IT startup space and has great developers. And a big shout out to them. And so having an investor who is from the IT, and startup space is actually really really helpful for media and can be an incredibly valuable partner if you find the right person. And I think we were lucky to find the right person.

Caithlin Mercer

42:33

I want to stay on key of independent for a second. Did you know when you set up Kyiv independent that it was going to be a crowdfunding model and how relieved Are you that it was

Jakub Parusinski

42:47

incredibly relieved? The I mean, that was part of the model from the start. So can you just post which is the sort of the spiritual predecessor was actually the first media to introduce a paywall in Ukraine and reader revenue sort of was a big part of it. So when we launched the cave independent, we knew that reader revenue and crowdfunding were going to be big things. The second point, I think was, which was really helpful is that, you know, we had all of this infrastructure in place, we didn't need to set it up. So Patreon GoFundMe, all of that was there. And you know, and in terms of our strategy, I mean, we were also looking very much to the experience of then you can, who you know, is fantastic. I know that you've written about that case, quite a few times. But yeah, I mean, you know, we clearly saw where the wind was. Blowing, but Oh, my God didn't help that, that everything was set up and yeah, yeah.

Caithlin Mercer

43:55

Almost amazing. Are there any drawbacks to that crowdfunding portal?

Jakub Parusinski

44:00

Well, I mean, so far for you, you know, I think so far for the cave independent, I would say no, we do need to get a little bit better in terms of community management and making sure that everyone is happy. I think for now, all of our supporters are kind of quite understanding that you know, there's a lot of burning issues and maybe we aren't doing as many surveys and needs assessments and talking to our community quite as much as as as needed. But you know, I think everyone kind of understands. I don't think there is a there is a huge problem. There is a bit of a risk. Down the line. I don't I think maybe less for the cave independent than for other media is that you know, if you are supported by a bubble of, of supporters, you know, a very specific demographic, political, whatever group you can easily get or more easily get lost in that bubble then. Then if you have a very diversified model.

Caithlin Mercer

45:08

I want to see if we can go back to the room, because Hannah had a question about the community and place around key of independence, and let's just see if we can get them back. And while we're waiting to get them back, let me follow up with a question very quickly. Do you think more journalists need to have business experience and understanding and perhaps MBAs?

Jakub Parusinski

45:38

Look, I'm not gonna argue against it. I think. I think journalists should really understand how their how their businesses work, you know, partially to kind of not do things that go against it. Because the some, you know, I've, I mean, it's an old story, but you know, if you've got a paywall, and then people ask you to share the articles and you start sending PDFs around. I mean, you're undermining your own media a little bit. Yeah, that definitely is an issue. But I think also in terms of look, I think one of well one of the things that I really didn't like about media five and 10 years ago, and which I think is going away, but I hope it goes away sooner is that because of the advertising base model we had to have the silos, right. You had editorial on one side and commercial on the other side. And that led to something that almost every media that was based on that model has which is that editorial considers themselves the real media people and the other people are considered a little bit you know, like second rate, second class sort of stuff. And that leads to tons of conflict and frankly, it's look you know, I used to be a journalist was really sad to leave journalism now I you know, I find the management side much more interesting. So many puzzles to solve so many sort of creative things to come up to like, but you know, what media have going for them is that there's a brand or is there's a mission, and it doesn't matter, you know, whether you're doing sales or community management, you're part of that story. You know, I mean, like, there's that cliche of the janitor who was working at NASA and you know, when they asked him what he what he does, well, he's helping send, you know, people to the moon or to Mars or whatever. I mean, there needs to be more of that in media. And I think, you know, having journalists know about business is definitely helpful, but also look as an industry, we're still weak on project management, we're still weak on you know, operations, processes, all of that kind of stuff. I'm not saying MBAs are the solution to everything, but we can definitely increase the amount that we have, like add a bit of that ingredient because the industry is a bit lacking.

Caithlin Mercer

47:57

I mean, without getting to kind of colorful and theatrical. It is the sort of the closest I ever feel to something like a god is when I see this level of cooperation between the media managers and the journalists and the audience. Managers and every, every part that goes into putting that out, and then when I see the level of collaboration between those different teams, that you've managed to achieve in the face of, you know, evil, it's makes my heart sing. Anyway, we're gonna go to her next well it's

Jakub Parusinski

48:34

huge thanks to Vladimir Putin on that account. Collaboration that he has generated is really

Caithlin Mercer

48:43

wonderful. Yeah, we should give him a Nobel Prize. Hi, Nick.

Speaker 2

48:48

Hi. Maybe not. Thank you so much for being here. I have two questions if I can just jump right in. First was, is we've been talking about Cuba independent has gotten a lot of support from abroad. And I was wondering, has it created any tensions in terms of like solidarity, being the one that's sort of out in front and getting all the international support in what you were saying is a very competitive industry in Ukraine? And then the second question was just, you've done such an amazing job of preparing and learning us, us the world is sort of collapse around you, but is there anything that still just completely blindsided you that you weren't prepared for that this happened in the last 810 weeks?

Jakub Parusinski

49:36

Well, I mean, I look I thank you, I appreciate that. The you know, the the sort of the sentiment, I wouldn't say that it was all quite so successful. So honestly, the fact that we didn't have the bulletproof vests in place before the war, you know, I mean, we had some instincts, we moved some people out and move them around. We did a bit of preparation. But you know, honestly, it wasn't enough and we should have done a lot more. I think the difficulty and the challenge of doing logistics and just how much detailed knowledge and process management that requires was absolutely you know, unexpected even even, you know, having worked in in other industries, I was still surprised. So there were a lot of things that I think we could do better and hopefully we won't have to but you know, we'll know for the future or for you know, I don't want to say next time I hope there will never be a next time because this is so horrible. But yeah. Regarding the competition, or sort of the tensions. i That's an excellent question. And to be honest, that's actually what motivated us as meaning the key of independent, to very quickly start to push and put resources to help fundraise and support our other colleagues because the cave independent was in a very privileged position. There weren't that many sources of reliable information in English and all of a sudden the world was following. And where did that following start and stop it often with the cave independent? So we tried to get in front of that as quickly as possible launching, you know, the second GoFundMe, I think it was hours after we started working, we were like Okay, it looks like a lot of support is going to come to the cave independent. We need to make sure there's other support that goes to other ones and we're also changing the messaging. I think if you look back, first couple of days, there was a lot of support us in the in the Twitter feed, and then it became more of like, support our colleagues, right, because we are starting to be in a place where we're more comfortable. You know, does that completely alleviate tensions? Probably not. But I think we did manage to to solve a big chunk of that problem.

Caithlin Mercer

52:09

Brilliant. Thank you. I want to play devil's advocate for a second and ask you. As incredible as all of this collaboration is seeing people working together sharing data. And as incredible as the collaboration from the readers themselves is let's just say very broadly speaking, with more people shifting into read of reader funded models, is there a concern that a combination of demands from the readers and and audience data could impact impartiality?

Jakub Parusinski

52:45

I think yes. So there's actually look, when you when you when you look at sort of what people are ready to pay for. And I think this is something by the way that we see also in donations to sort of investigative or sort of very mission driven media. What people want to see is a result usually a political result, somebody goes to jail, somebody you know, is taken out of public life and usually it's negative it's rarely within an investigation and this guy's or this girl is so so great that you know, you need to make the minister right. It's usually we did an investigation turns out this person's corrupt, and you need to put them in jail. What people pay for is the political result. They don't necessarily pay for the eight weeks or eight months of research that some journalists did to get to that result. And that does create a risk that there's going to be media that are just going to focus on you know, it already exists by the way media that are, you know, pushing various political messages, activist messages as the way to fundraise. And, you know, can you do that a little bit without going overboard? Probably. Are there big risks about going too far with it? Definitely. You know, the other problem with free their funded models is that, you know, a lot of the challenges these days is that, you know, there's there's some people who follow the news who are very well informed. And then there's a lot of people who don't follow the news and or are very poorly informed. And, you know, most of them, don't pay for news, right? Like it's rare to have. To rare it's quite rare to have, you know, reader funded media spread outright disinformation. But you know, if content is only accessible to people who pay for it, and there's a big chunk of people aren't covered.

Caithlin Mercer

54:57

Very good points. We've got five minutes left Yaqoob and I wanted to spend them talking a bit about what your journalists and media organizations in in Ukraine still need. Support on what the international community can do to help. Yeah.

Jakub Parusinski

55:19

So look, it was true on day two of the Warner continues to be drawn they at that the single biggest you know, way to keep journalists safe in Ukraine is anti tank weaponry. Right. It's a, you know, we've had consistent targeting of journalists or obvious, completely oblivious targeting. of journalists, by Russian troops. And it's just as much as you know, if we want to keep, you know, journalists safe, then you know, right now, actually, one of the biggest sources of that is the Ukrainian Armed Forces. That's not something that's going to be on forever. You know, like, look, I worked in Ukraine for many years as a journalist, I know, you know, work across Central Eastern Europe. A partnership of the military and journalists is not a natural one, and it's not one that you know, we're super like, naturally comfortable with but right now, this is the biggest support. So if people can, that's, that's the first thing to do. In terms of supporting the media, I would say, look, it's also important for us to take the longer term, because if you because right now what we have is we have a whole lot of donors, international donors who are jumping to the occasion to sort of support Ukrainian media, while it's in the headlines, and probably a lot of programs that will be launched over the next couple of years. But we've seen this is especially in the sea, but also globally, time and time again. There were the wars in the Balkans, lots of support came in media grew support left media collapsed, right. There were there was the Caucasus, you know, Ukraine for this is the first time right that there's going to be such a wave of support. We also need to think about how we're going to how we can sustain a competitive, competent, sustainable media ecosystem through this wave and after the sort of the support goes away. Because that is a real treasure that you know, that we can't let die.

Caithlin Mercer

57:31

When you think about how this ends. Oh, when you dream about how this ends, what does it look like?

Jakub Parusinski

57:40

Well, when I dream about how this ends, it's, it's, you know, the Ukraine is free, is whole and has a whole ton of media that can report about like, honestly, I'm, I want the media to be able to get back to, you know, covering business covering, you know, what's happening with the environment, which is a huge sort of area for growth of media, but also really important socially, but I also want media to get back to writing about celebrity gossip, like, no, just just get back to normal. How does it end in practice? I don't know. solving one problem at a time, but I'm optimistic.

Caithlin Mercer

58:28

Yeah, good. Thank you so much. for your time today. I wish you a very, very, very speedy return to the weekend round up of events in the Ukrainian newspapers. Let's, let's let's see that happening soon. And I'm just so deeply appreciative of the lessons that we've learned from you. I'm sorry that we had to learn them but I'm really deeply appreciative that you took the time to, to actually impart some of this wisdom. And may we all never need it, but you're doing a great job. Keep going.

Jakub Parusinski

59:02

Well, thank you very much. I hope that we find the time and write it all up as a case study. That's what the fix was was doing in the past and I hope that we managed to get back to that but thank you for for the possibility to discuss this and for everyone to taking the time.

Caithlin Mercer

59:20

We're back next week with Yasmine Hakuna from El Salvador and Paraguay edge is talking about infographics. They've got some award winning visual storytelling and we're looking forward to hearing lessons from her. And everyone go well see you soon. Yakko come and visit

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