Natalya Dankova, the Telekritika/ 11 Apr 2007
 
System Capital Management will invest in development of qualitative media education. The roundtable dedicated to the problems launched a program. 
 
Experts, journalists and educationists discussed media business, drawbacks of journalist education and ways to develop the education in view of new conditions during the roundtable "Digital technologies and new quality of journalist education as response to challenges and threats of Ukrainian media market" organized on April 10, 2007 by SCM's Foundation for Development of Ukraine in tandem with "Innovation" company. This discussion unveiled a new program aimed at development of qualitative media education in Ukraine.
 
Anatoliy Zabolotny, Director of Foundation for Development of Ukraine, stressed that media was the most important institution in the society and one of the indispensable conditions of its development. "Along with that the media industry is a business, so they [mass media] exist on the competitive market," Mr. Zabolotny added and proposed to have a look at the media situation in the context of the world trends.
 
Jose Antonio Ferris, advisor of Innovation company, presented research of the world and Ukrainian media market. In his opinion, the principal world trends include an annual increase of 2.36 percent in newspaper circulation, growth in free print media changing the newspaper price concept (their number doubled for the last five years), appearance of new media (Internet and others). "Key points of new journalism include appearance of new media, meeting new requirements by existing media, interactivity and multimedia, development of new niches and new models of media business," Mr Ferris stated. He also emphasized that due to development of new technologies the cost of market entrance was getting down: "No high barriers exist now. We open an Internet page for $100, and afterwards this page is visited by millions."
 
"The Financial Times I used to work for has two types of journalists: hunters and cooks. Hunters walk around searching for a prey, and the cooks search for ways "to cook" the prey (information) so a reader can digest it," Mr. Ferris added. Media expert Andriy Kulikov proposed to add waiters and restaurant owners to the list, meaning managers and media owners.
 
Mr. Ferris recommended to attend trainings on a regular basis, to study and to realize the importance of a hunter role in the journalism as well as not to forget about human factor: "Exclusive material is a key to success. Less PR actions and press conferences and more striking material".
 
Yevhen Fedchenko, Director of Kyiv-Mohyla School of Journalism, stressed that Ukrainian media market blinded by success of development during the first years did not realize its potential to the full extent: "Now we do not think of tomorrow but are in the state of euphoria from the work done. If today we are focused on separate existence of TV, radio and newspapers, tomorrow we will have a dull market". He told about experience of students of the Kyiv-Mohyla School of Journalism who had made their own news and disseminated it in the Internet. The news was daily viewed by over 5,000. "If we compare the cost of this production and the audience which we didn't hunt for intentionally that will be the answer what direction Ukrainian media should move to," Mr. Fedchenko summarized. 
 
Volodymyr Golovko, Editor-in-chief of "UGMK.info" business portal, stressed that Internet had not become an important business in Ukraine so far: "We do not have Internet advertisement market. In fact, some 912,000 are Internet users in Ukraine, including 500,000 who live in Kiev."
 
Diana Dutsik, Editor-in-chief of the Bez tsenzury newspaper, emphasized the intention of the media owners to make their media sources yellow. Yuriy Babinets, a representative of Gala-media company, observed the drawback of legal framework as a core problem of the domestic media market: "For example, the law requires from the radio stations to broadcast 50 percent of Ukrainian music. So, we are governed by the laws that do not take into account the market requirements rather than by such market requirements."
 
Andriy Khrustalyov, Editor-in-chief of the "Komsomolskaya Pravda v Ukraine", stressed that the journalist education fell behind the media market: "We have already taken all specialists, and there are no new ones yet." Serhiy Kvit, Dean of Social Science and Technologies Department of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy disproved this statement, saying that media market was under formation, so it was not the right time to put forward demands for the education system. "We haven't any connection between media market and education so far. That's why every dean decides at his or her discretion how future journalist should be brought up. We have the similar situation in the content estimation: when we speak of what our audience wants we do not take into account the fact that we know nothing of it. Just few of us conduct audience demand studies," Mr. Kvit stated. Yevhen Fedchenko added that these days other Governments were paying for education of Ukrainian journalists [Telekritika: apparently he referred to grant programs], and media industry simply applied these skills.
 
The roundtable launched a journalist education program of SCM's Foundation for Development of Ukraine. Mr. Anatoliy Zabolotny told the Telekritika why Rinat Akhmetov's company was engaged in the journalist education: "Our Foundation is engaged in development of professional education throughout Ukraine. We have conducted studies and discovered an enormous gap between what the employers need and what Ukraine's education system provides to the students. In particular, journalist education has significant gaps as well. Presently, employers want a journalist to have knowledge in a particular area rather than knowledge of journalism. We have been conducting the studies for 8 months, and have decided to launch such a project." According to Mr. Zabolotny, Kyiv-Mohyla Academy will be a basic partner of the Foundation. Yet, the Foundation will cooperate with many other higher education establishments within the project.
 
"The next step is to launch a journalist training program. We will announce a plan of actions in early June. The program will be focused on development of professional contemporary approaches to the journalist education. Nowadays the mass media exist on the competitive market. Traditional mass media such as newspapers, radio, TV, must reckon with these factors to build a proper development strategy. Our objective is to help our journalist education make a step forward," Mr. Zabolotny stated. Mainly the journalists having particular experience will become the project participants. "We do not plan to charge the participants during the first stage, but we hope that over few years Ukraine will have full-fledged establishments able to satisfy media market needs in specialists," he added.