Den’s 16th International Photo Exhibition was dedicated to the paper’s 18th birthday anniversary. So the celebration brought not only warm greetings, but also unique presents from our readers. The most memorable were a bunch of flowers made from our newspaper’s pages (see issue No. 66 of October 28, 2014) and a new samizdat tome “Readers about Den” (2013-14) from our permanent reader, friend, and Den’s unofficial bibliographer Halyna ALEKSANDROVA from Mariupol. For years this fragile woman has been compiling hand-made books based on the reactions from our readers (a sort of feedback from our audience). This year, according to the compiler, the birthday present for our paper was of extraordinary weight, both in terms of volume and quality. The nation has survived a difficult year, an incredible emotional shock, and in search of answers to hundreds of burning questions turned to Den as a political and economic expert, old friend, and competent adviser.
“My route to the photo exhibit was via Poltava. I saw troops at the railroad station in this peaceful, quiet city. The nation continues to live in conditions of war. And it continues to look for answers to burning questions, the main being ‘What tomorrow brings us,’” says Aleksandrova. “Often answers to these questions could be found in Den, as a comprehensive mega-media phenomenon comprising the newspaper, the Photo Exhibition, books, and dozens of other topical projects. This year collecting texts, photos, cartoons, and readers’ letters about Den seemed to me particularly interesting and necessary. This is a common quest for the right answers. A sort of antidote to what we were subjected to.”
This year’s self-made “Readers about Den” includes clippings of the most interesting, in the compiler’s opinion, interviews, articles, letters, reports, and photos of the previous year, where readers share their ideas of their own future and of Den. Here one can find impressions of the new publications of the previous years, “Subversive Literature” and “Armor-Piercing Political Writing” series, which are perceived as a sort of intellectual ammunition for Ukraine: had the nation been armed with them, many of today’s problems could have been avoided; Den’s last year’s photo exhibition and a combined image of Ukraine as a warning and a forecast, with the story of Natalia Kravchuk, who won Den’s Golden Award for her series YES. Yalta 2013. The texts covering Den’s involvement in Maidan enjoy particular attention: what the paper wrote, what it warned about, and why it never happened. Then come Den in Crimea, Den in the east, with our defenders reading the paper, Den in hospitals read by the wounded.
“The newspaper empathized with the entire nation. And I reiterate, it offered to look for ways out of the crisis together, and to talk frankly with one another,” goes on Aleksandrova. “Here Den sets the tone for other media. No other paper practices such a warm, cordial, and frank mutual communication with its audience. The paper has various forms of involving its readers in its initiatives, it offers an intellectual challenge, urges to make correct inferences, think critically and most importantly, not to be indifferent. That is why Den has the best reading audience: intelligent, purposeful, smart, and patriotic. They are the locomotive of change in the country. The Photo Exhibition offered another convincing proof of the audience’s erudition. On the one hand, as Den’s editor-in-chief Larysa Ivshyna aptly observed, the exhibited photos represent ‘new Ukrainian characters and types.’ For instance, take this year’s winner of the golden award, Callsign Sokil, or the photo I voted for: Artem Slipachuk’s Partner. They are our defenders. On the other hand, talking to the visitors of the exhibit, the paper’s readers, you realize that these are the people with a new view of Ukraine’s development. They are intellectuals and experts in their professional field, often people of encyclopedic erudition. And not only that. There are ordinary readers, open-hearted people who found themselves in an information vacuum and see the newspaper as the last resort for help.”
Aleksandrova says that she has collected Den’s issues virtually from the very start. “My first acquaintance with Den was indirect,” shares the reader. “I heard an advertisement that Den would be a new, European-class newspaper. Indeed, that was the only ad which was true, and it evoked my interest. I immediately went to the post-office to subscribe. Since then, since 1997 that is, I have been a regular subscriber. Of course, due to the war the delivery is now sometimes disrupted. For instance, in July I only got one issue in Mariupol. But later it returned to normal. To avoid an information gap due to irregular delivery, I follow the developments in the country and their interpretation from issue to issue, and I made the October subscription for my acquaintance in Kharkiv. She receives the paper, reads it, and sends it to me.
“If we win on the information front, we will win the war. This is possible with Den, which not only diagnoses, but also offers a treatment plan.”
