Uman: “We want to join in”

“In the article ‘Read. Think. Act!’ (issue No. 73 of December 8, 2015) universities are rightfully defined as the special areas where the newspaper Den is read,” writes to the editorial office of the newspaper deputy dean of the history department of the Pavlo Tychyna State Pedagogical University Ihor OPATSKY, “Students of the history department of our university agree with this statement. And they cultivate it. So, studying at the university they regularly use the articles from the newspaper Den for writing essays, course papers, to prepare for seminars and roundtables. Historical opinion-journalism, news of political life of Ukraine and the world, the publication’s attention to culture events – all these give the students a possibility to always keep their finger on the pulse of the events and enrich their intellect with thorough analytics. Therefore our students read Den on a regular basis.”

According to Ihor Opatsky, the students of the university eagerly join the flash mob “Den’s Favorite” and invite everyone to mark the year 2016 as the year of high-quality press. Why our publication should become a national platform for quality thinking and what initiatives should be expected in 2016, the Year of the Newspaper Den and our readers, read in the commentaries of well-known scholars, publicists, and intellectuals.

“HOPEFULLY, OUR STUDENTS AND TEACHERS WILL CONTRIBUTE TO MAKING THE YEAR OF THE NEWSPAPER AND ITS READERS A REAL EVENT”

Maria ZUBRYTSKA, pro-rector on academic-pedagogical work of the Lviv-based Ivan Franko National University:

“The counter initiatives of the readers of Den to announce 2016 as the year of the newspaper, and, correspondingly, the initiative of the editors of the newspaper to announce the next year as the year of Den’s readers is a rare for Ukrainian media space example of mutual existence and mutual work, which shape the collective platform of agreement and trust in the coordinates of the national communication.

“The initiatives and projects of the newspaper Den are building step by step the collective forms of everyday communication, where the life world and the life experience of authors and readers, old traditions and new spirit of the time, which has a significant influence on the dynamics of social feelings, are closely intertwined. Above all, this is the initiative of shaping the national conscience via the Den’s Library, which is a successful cooperation project of dynamic communication, which gives one an opportunity to demonstrate for real reading audiences the polyphonic nature of the discourse image of Ukrainian reality through the prism of its history and present day.

“In Den we find examples of writing the memory of collective feelings, historical, and cultural memory of Ukrainians into the culture of our everyday life. The aware citizens of our country feel the need for this kind of careful unfolding of the communicative-ontological dimension of our past and our present-time, when an authoritative and open for trust newspaper becomes a source and means of translating the national values and record the cultural, spiritual, and social coordinates of Ukrainian society. For this I want to thank Larysa Ivshyna, her personal intellectual stand and intellectual courage to aspire for the great things and in this aspiration to weave the fine fabric of the national awareness and dignity in a masterful, inspire, and consistent way, using various forms of mediation. I don’t know any other editors of Ukrainian mass media who would meet so often with the academic communities of Ukrainian universities, take an active part in organizing and holding of summer schools for journalism students, organize photo exhibits and presentations, in a laconic and apt way comment on the events and analytical materials on their Facebook pages, etc.

“We must be proud that the newspaper Den has become a socio-cultural tuning fork in the long process of forming the multiple nationally aware audiences of readers. Therefore our university will support the initiatives both of the readers of the newspaper Den and the editors of Den, to announce the year 2016 the Year of the Newspaper Den and its readers, in every possible way. Hopefully, our students and teachers will make their contribution to making the Year of the Newspaper Den and its readers a real event.”

“YOU SIMPLY NEED TO READ DEN EVERY DAY”

Iryna KLIUCHKOVSKA, director of the International Institute of Education, Culture, and Contacts with Diaspora at the National University “Lviv Polytechnic”:

“As a regular reader of my favorite newspaper, I welcome the initiative to announce 2016 the year of the 20th anniversary of the newspaper Den. In the Gospel of Luke we read how ill and insane were brought to Jesus. Jesus healed only some of them, not everyone. He cured only those who trusted in the triumph of his truth. Dmytro Dontsov writes in his work Shevchenko’s Ideas about God and Nation that ‘Only when people start to passionately believe in the truth, when they have a firm will to fight for it, the chains of slavery will fall. They won’t be free from slavery, until this happens, as long as they let the kites to steal them as sheep or as chicken in the weeds.’

“Freedom and courage is the key to professing the truth for yourself and the community. Far from every one of us is given these supreme values. Far from everyone wanted or dared to learn the truth and bring it to people. And we are lucky that always, even in the time of greatest trouble and despair, statelessness and foreign suppression, we have always had people who undertook this huge task. Let’s recall how very recently, when we all were in the great concentration camp called the Soviet Union, we if didn’t accept, then got adapted to the rules of the game, creating a space of our own, where double standards were blossoming and cultivated. We felt quite comfortable there, like in a warm marsh. And even after the independence was declared, we got drunk from the deceitful feeling of freedom, didn’t see and didn’t want to see various crimes, which were skillfully wrapped into the cover of nice sweet words. So, in our time those were the Sixtiers, who were holding the Ukrainian heaven, paying with their welfare, careers, and their lives. And then there were those who told the truth, and they were found dead in the woods, or they were killed in car accidents.

Photo by Artem SLIPACHUK, The Day

“Twenty years ago the territory of freedom emerged – it was the newspaper Den, which stubbornly and persistently broadened its space, entering all cities and towns, villages and hamlets, student classrooms and village clubs. For many years it has been doing everything to make the ‘passionate belief in the truth’ win.

“The newspaper has been living its complicated life, like a person does. For is it easy for those who refuse from servility and bring to the light the truth about the Holodomor in Ukraine, our heroic UPA and its leaders, the Kyivan Rus’, and explains to us all the privatization of our history, showing what we really are? It is hard to list everything. You simply need to read Den every day.

“There is no doubt that it is up to us, how we will be able to use this rich material. That is why for me personally it was so important that Den entered the Lviv Polytechnic and stayed there on a regular basis. An occasional personal meeting with the editor-in-chief of the newspaper Larysa Ivshyna laid the beginning of the great communication between the students of the polytechnic university and the team of the International Institute of Education, Culture, and Contacts with Diaspora. Our dialogs have always exceeded the limits of halls and continued in the academic environment, inspiring serious discussions and initiating interesting events. It is important that Den with every year finds new numerous readers, sympathizers, and fans, who eagerly wait for the meetings, both with Larysa Ivshyna, who is also a member of the Monitoring Council of Lviv Polytechnic, and the team of Den.

“‘Learn the truth and the truth will save you.’ The more truth we absorb, the easier it will be for us to proceed. This is our home task set by life itself. The newspaper Den is the intellectual playground, the source, where we take the truth about ourselves, our history, and present day.”

“YOUR PUBLICATIONS ARE AN IMPULSE FOR SELF-PERFECTION”

Yosyp LOS, professor, head of the department of foreign press and information of the journalism department, Lviv-based Ivan Franko National University:

“The newspaper Den, whose 20th anniversary is a significant event for every reader, represents the ‘top league’ of journalism, the worldview opinion-journalism. According to the definition of its founder Mykola Shlemkevych, it is the ‘avant-garde of spirit.’ The skilful combination of situational information of global scope with substantial information, which focuses attention on the meaningfulness of life, gives reasons to ascribe the Ukrainian publication to the most prestigious opinion-creating newspapers of the world. Den should continue to publish conceptual articles, essays, dialogs, commentaries, and other materials, which will continue to assert the historical consciousness as the highest ethical and spiritual value of a person; this is especially important for us Ukrainians, who have a rich heritage in all domains of individual and collective life, at least starting with Trypillia. Close attention to emblematic personalities of the nation, disclosing of the crucial events, in particular, the participation of Kyivan Rus’ (as an example) in shaping of the European civilization convincingly prove that our territory has since ancient time been part of the Mediterranean cultural circle.

“Since Ukrainian events are a world problem, a huge importance of the newspaper is in expressively accentuating the questions of identifying the people, which has again appeared on the arena of history. Actually, recent events make more and more people on all continents understand that Ukraine and Russia are different cultures and civilizations. And in this sense we have won a huge war, i.e., we have identified ourselves, understood the self-value of Ukrainian national organism, which is typically European. And there is a merit of Den in this. However, present-day Russia, which has expressively defined itself an heir of a typical Asian empire, has lost its world-view, cultural, social, economical, and genetic fundament, which means our heritage. Here it will be appropriate to mention the words by famous American president Abraham Lincoln: ‘You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.’ After all, you won’t live with what you’ve stolen, you will lose what you have if you try to steal someone else’s. The prospect belongs to the root culture, the heritage of your own. If Russia rejects the shameful imperial past, identifying itself based on the groundwork of its own history, it will have a prospect to create a new world, like all other nations.

“Personally for me, many publications of Den became an impulse to improve the concept of worldview opinion journalism for the present day. In the textbook Prospects of Worldview Opinion Journalism, which was published in the end of 2014, there are many references to the conceptual materials of our leading periodical. I want to make an emphasis on the commentaries and contemplations of Prof. James Mace. The students of the journalism department of the Lviv National University study them with great interest. Today, when narrow-minded Ukrainian specialists or open enemies in different ways are trying to turn Ukrainian black soil into an item of trade, I recall every time Mace’s commentary, Tragedy That Is Ripening. Noting that Ukrainian fertile land is one of relative advantages of Ukraine in the world, the Great Ukrainian, an American from Indian Cherokee tribe warned that people who work on the best agricultural lands in the world and don’t have neither money, nor power, will get a doubtful right to sell this land to those who have both,’ will be purposefully deported from the land that has fed their ancestors. I think that this material (published back on February 24, 2004) must be published again, to make today’s powers that be, which are strangers by their spirit, come to their senses.

“The mass media column, publications on culture and art, photo reports allow to correct the information sphere, make one think on the meaning of the word. For it must free, not enslave. One should take care of the wonderful Ukrainian language in the newspaper, not giving our foes any reasons to humiliate the Ukrainian language. A whole number of the newspaper’s regular contributors are its gold fund, like the books published by Den, for asserting the eternity, they must become for the leaders in our humanitarian sphere an everyday guideline of seeing the world and themselves in the world.

“The encyclopedia of knowledge recreated in the publication must become a regular factor of awareness of representatives of all Ukrainian generations.

“Among the events that will be scheduled to the 20th anniversary of Den I think it is important to hold in Kyiv an International Academic-Practical Conference ‘Opinion-creating press of the world on the challenges of the 21st century.’ And in the oblast centers of all regions, hopefully, traditional meetings with readers, in particular the student youth, will be held.”