How Ukrainian News Organisations Have Adapted to Reporting News at a Time of War

The next speaker in this Future of Journalism 2023 conference is Marisa Porto, whose interest is in local news sustainability during times of crisis – what can be learnt from the performance of local news organisations in Ukraine during the current war? Her project studied 10 local newsrooms there in September and October 2022 (some six months after the Russian invasion), with interviews at times interrupted by air raids and other safety issues.

This also represents some of the challenges to the journalists themselves, of course; news organisations needed to develop safety protocols for their work, especially for reporters out in the field – e.g. identifying the nearest bomb shelters, dealing with Russian military threats, etc. There were also substantial logistics issues: for print outlets, for instance, Russian and Belarusian printing presses were now out of reach, and some of them moved to online-only publishing as a result. Delivery of newspapers is also affected by combat, refugee movements, and other disruptions of delivery routes.

Digital operations, meantime, were sometimes affected by the unavailability of Russian-run hosting platforms and Russian hacking operations; some had to rebuild their digital presences from scratch. Domains and URLs also needed to change, and Internet and mobile services were also often disrupted. Further, financial sustainability was also affected by a decline in advertising revenue and the loss of advertising support systems.

Such news organisations mainly did well if they managed to reframe their challenges to opportunities; they often communicated openly with staff about these challenges, and involved them in problem-solving. Many also switched their language profiles, from Ukrainian and Russian to Ukrainian and English (plus Polish, Romanian, etc. in some cases), adjusted their logistics, and explored new revenue streams. Challenges mentioned in interviews but yet to be explored by the research also included misinformation, propaganda, and responding to military censorship.