I recall how over three years ago Editor-in-Chief Larysa Ivshyna, English Language Desk Editor Liudmyla Humeniuk, translator George Sklyar, and I sat and discussed the project that produced The Day. I cannot say it was easy. We worked late, Saturdays and Sundays, but gradually we established our rhythm, and our work became more routine. Still, the essence of the project remains: to tell the world in English what some of Ukraine’s best journalists are writing about what is happening in Ukraine. Nobody else does this, although I hear of such projects all the time. I wish them well, but here I have found a home and an audience.
When I came here, my old friend Mykhailo Batih at the UNIAN Agency advised me against it. “A newspaper is like a drug,” he said. “The ink gets in your blood and won’t let you go. When will you ever have time to write the big articles people talk about? You won’t.”
In truth, I do not have the time I would like to write analytical articles or prepare better for the classes I teach at the Kiev-Mohyla Academy and the International Christian University. I have book reviews that are overdue and friends I have not seen in years. But my old friend was right. There is something about a newspaper that does enter your bloodstream. Perhaps it is the almost mystical connection with the reader you never hear from but know is out there. Or maybe simply the little old lady in the bazaar saying she happened to read something I wrote or saw me on television. In any case, there is a feeling of being heard, that what I have to say is being read, and, if not heeded, at least considered. The mass media is worlds apart for the world of scholarly journals that I knew. Both have their advantages and disadvantages, but if one wants to change things, one has to do so through the medium that has a mass audience.
I have been many places and done many things in my near half-century, but never have I enjoyed an audience I so loved. I never ask anyone to agree with me, but I do ask them to think about the arguments I put forward. Maybe together we can just make things in this country a little better, a little more civilized, and a little more humane.
