The crazy staffing crisis in Ukrainian journalism hit regional newsrooms first and foremost. Low salaries compared to capital publications and fairly high demands for product quality have forced media managers to spend almost around the clock on selection, screening, and training. How this happens at the Kherson online media MOST and what to do right now for those who would like to become journalists someday is presented in a reflection-piece by MOST Kherson editor-in-chief Serhii Nikitenko and his deputy Yeva Vasilevska below.
Who we are looking for and who we find
Steadily every few months, or even more often, we in our regional media look for feed editors. People leave for various reasons – some find the constant flow of information hard, some burn out, some don’t understand the basics, some change their field of work. We have to say goodbye to some.
One cycle ends – another begins. We pull out the dusty vacancy, update it, post it wherever possible and at the same time ask about candidates from everyone connected to our field.
Next – working with resumes. Last time there were about a hundred of them. From them we selected 13 people for interviews. Analyzing them, one can draw certain, rather discouraging, conclusions: the future of regional news journalism, if based on these resumes, – is uncertain.
In roughly every third case, people applying for the feed editor vacancy do not understand the essence of this job. And it’s not their fault. Sites that publish nearly three hundred news items a day copied from other media, and Telegram channels have eroded that very essence. Not least, it seems to us, this is connected with the fact that previously the reporter and the feed editor were separate roles, and then some big merging happened and we received an influx of people who substituted the essence of things.
Separately, one can mention the number of inquiries from people who ran Telegram channels or pages of various online stores. The logic of applicants, it seems, is: there are letters there and here, so what could be the problem?
However, between “copying a news story” and “throwing together an Instagram post” and regional journalism lies a chasm many cannot jump.
After the stage of correspondence with applicants and a short Zoom, candidates for the feed editor position come to us and encounter a different reality, where we ask them to actually write news – analyze documents, work with registries, call officials.
At this stage the crisis we talk about is most visible – future feed editors do not know the basics. From the structure of a news story to which section of an official website to take local authority documents from. The maximum applicants can provide – even those with a journalism diploma, and those who have been in the field a long time – is someone else’s rewritten news.
For example, this “news story” was written by our intern, who had media experience and a journalism diploma. He was given a link to an entry in a Russian registry about a newly created union of entrepreneurs in the temporarily occupied part of the Kherson region and this was the result.
And this is the same news rewritten by us, which took no more than 30 minutes.
Is this a verdict on the higher education system in journalism? We don’t know, and we don’t want to throw around such words, but it makes you think.
From time to time the management of MOST has a discussion – maybe we simply ask too much? Yes, we want a lot. A lot in terms of what we expect from those who can offer us something. But not an excessive amount compared to what good old news journalism requires.
However, on the other hand, there are us, who ask for at least minimal effort, and there is some conditional media where you can rely on quantity, close your laptop and leave.
Yes, there is a lot of content now. A lot of unverified content, the creation of which requires no effort – it’s enough to just press “copy-paste” and add an emoji. There’s no talk of intellectual effort at all – because people simply don’t see the difference between entertainment content, text that sells something, and a news story.
It becomes clear that we’re not competing for people – we’re competing with laziness and a system that encourages this approach to journalism.
What to do about it?
What should we, media managers who want to develop quality media and don’t want to fill the feed with anything, do? Accept it and work with the market that exists now.
The illusion that ready-made specialists will suddenly appear should be left in the past. In the near future this won’t happen. Therefore now we seek completely different skills: the ability to analyze what you see, understand what’s read between the lines, instantly orient in context and, finally, have professional intuition.
Sooner or later, but rather sooner, artificial intelligence will take over all the technical routine – it will easily fill the feed with template rewrites and reformat statements from agencies. But people with deep skills, which we mentioned above, will remain for intellectual work that no algorithm will cover.
And you will have to train these people yourself.
Who and how works at MOST
At the moment, the MOST editorial team is:
- editor-in-chief;
- deputy editor-in-chief and head of the news department;
- head of the texts department;
- news department of three people (we have vacancies, write to [email protected]);
- SMM department, which consists of three people;
- accountant.
Freelancers include two video editors, two correspondents, six writers, and a dossier author.
For an editorial team that in May 2026 produced 17 features, 600 news items, of which 40-50% – are unique, 7 studio videos, 9 video reports, 53 dossiers, and runs all social networks that have reach from 6 to 9 million per month, – this is a very small number of people.
Our secret is optimizing processes and engaging freelancers, which allows rational use of resources. Obviously, in the team almost everyone can do almost everything. And newcomers will have to learn together with everyone.
Usually, beginners on the feed start with news based on official documents. These are the basics and the foundation. The ability to retell an official document in your own words, clearly and concisely, is an important skill. Then they learn to work with the YouControl business analytics system. They begin to look at contracts on Prozorro and verdicts in the Unified State Register of Court Decisions. This is the minimum set of tools that allows writing a proper news story and being a media outlet, not an aggregator of others’ news.
Tired of constant problems with background material for news, at the end of 2022 we launched the “Dossier” section on the site. In it we have already collected over 1500 profiles of officials, deputies, businessmen and companies. This takes a lot of time and resources, but journalists will always have background for a news story. Every MOST journalist must write 5 full profiles monthly. We even write profiles ourselves – the editor-in-chief and his deputy.
How MOST trains newcomers
This kind of in-house training in the newsroom is provided by several factors.
- Competition. Healthy competition inside the newsroom forces journalists to look for more interesting angles and work better. The spirit of rivalry is almost half the battle. Ideally, if there is competition with other media in the region. In Kherson region we are not so lucky.
- Quality control. The newsroom must have a person, preferably several, who perform the functions of a copy editor. We already have two. This prevents the content from deteriorating and the authors from relaxing.
- Training. The head of the newsroom will have to independently search for training programs, verify the trainers on them so that journalists don’t waste time on yet another ineffective training.
- Testing of newcomers. Testing should not be an essay on a free topic – a rewritten story about internally displaced persons or a strawberry-growing business – but work with registries and documents. We ask to process as often as possible orders of the head of the administration or make news on a court verdict. Such things immediately show whether a person is capable of thinking and understanding what is read.
- Error day. If possible and there is time, we organize an “error day” in the newsroom. Sometimes we work on this one-on-one. We select the stories from the week that didn’t run and dissect in detail with the authors what’s wrong with them and what can be improved.
What should those who see themselves in real journalism do?
Develop yourself. We won’t advise anything else.
- Saw a news item in another media outlet? Don’t rush to rewrite it. Find the original: go to the relevant site, open the register, find the specific city council decision or the post on the official page of the agency. Read it, wade through the bureaucratic language. It’ll be hard the first, second or third time, but by the fourth you’ll understand.
- Does the document still seem complicated? Call the press service, ask officials to explain. Let your phonebook be full of numbers of people who can help you. They may ignore you, of course, but then you can proudly write that you sought comment.
- Study the context. Half of a good news story is background. Sometimes more. And how can you give background if you don’t know the local context? Yes, it’s difficult and takes years. Plus, it’s a process with no end, but it’s definitely worth it – to know who is connected to whom and how. Without background you’ll only see the tip of the iceberg, and therefore a standard official press release will be enough for you.
- Read. Reading helps build the skill of being well-read. Colleagues’ materials, translations of foreign articles, fiction — all of this will help not only to enrich your vocabulary but also to develop your own style.
Developing is consciously choosing the hard path. Pressing “ctrl+c” “ctrl+v” is much easier – for that you don’t need to think, and the risk of making mistakes in analysis or getting into a conflict with an official disappears.
But copy-paste creates only the illusion of work, whereas development creates a name.
Serhii Nikitenko, regional representative Institute of Mass Information in Kherson region
Yeva Vasilevska, deputy editor-in-chief of the online media MOST