IT-Den

February 7, 2015, marks the 18th (!) anniversary of Den’s website. In this period, the publication had turned from a printed newspaper into what is now often called convergent media. For you can read Den on paper, watch it online, “befriend” and argue with it in social networking sites. Incidentally, two years ago, on the editorial board’s instructions, Yuliana Lavrysh, an instructor at Lviv National Ivan Franko University and a Den’s Summer School of Journalism graduate, reported at an international journalistic conference that Den was a convergent media.

The combination of different forms of information presentation and readiness to interact with readers allows Den to be called one of Ukraine’s largest digital publications. If you enumerate all the facets and planes in which Den maintains contact with its reader, you can surely say that it has long been a “7D” newspaper.

This article is the editors’ attempt to acquaint the reader more closely with the phenomenon of IT-Den.

DEN IS UKRAINE’S FIRST PUBLICATION THAT ESTABLISHED A WEBSITE OF ITS OWN

The first online Den came out as long ago as 1997. “The newspaper Den in fact opened a window to Ukraine then. For it is through our website that Ukrainians in various countries gained access to the news about their fatherland. First of all, in Canada,” says Oleksandr PISNY, the newspaper’s IT manager. Therefore, thanks to the Internet, information about Ukraine began to directly reach foreign readers. Incidentally, the Ukrainian-born American Lubomyr Romankiw, a forefather of the modern personal computer, has said he draws information about his fatherland from such online resources as Den.

In the almost 18 years of its existence, Den’s electronic version has undergone four stages of changes, Pisny says. The first version, launched on February 7, 1997, was a tryout. “We put out the first four Internet issues of the newspaper then and a little more next month. And we made a full-fledged website in the next spring. Yet it was just an electronic version of our newspaper. Materials were downloaded the next day after the publication of a printed newspaper, ” he says. Later, in 1998, the website switched to the automatic mode, when materials simultaneously went to be printed and to be handled by online editors.

Approximately at that period, the newspaper began to come out in three languages – Ukrainian, Russian, and English. The English-language version, The Day, is now edited by Anna Motoziuk. As Den’s editor-in-chief Larysa Ivshyna once noted wittily, “the entire Ukraine learns English together with Den, and the entire world studies Ukraine, reading The Day.”

It is James Mace who laid down clear-cut rules for the English-language version of Den. This well-known American historian and political scientist used to contribute to and edit The Day. He also researched the Ukraine Holodomor and initiated the project “Light a Candle in the Window.” Incidentally, Den annually awards the James Mace Prize for the best work in journalism.

The year 2000 saw the website’s second version. The overall looks and design changed, as did the content – a news line was added. As the newspaper’s website gained more and more popularity in Ukraine and the world, it began to show adverts. A web editorial board, consisting of two persons, was set up.

The third version was drawn up in 2005. “The website management system was changed. Earlier, pages had been prepared according to pattern. But when the Content Management System (CMS) was installed, it became far easier for web editors to shape the content and share work,” Pisny says. A little later, the website had its design changed again and was complemented with a poll and vote service as well as with the chief editor’s page.

The latest – fourth – version has been in existence since 2013. Today, Den’s website is a full-fledged information portal filled with materials of various subjects and genres. At the same time, all materials for the printed, online, and TV versions are prepared by the same editors.

JULY 2000. AN EVENT THAT HAS ALMOST GONE TO ETERNITY: DEN’S OBSERVER KLARA GUDZYK HANDS THE POPE “THE DEN GOLDEN COMPACT DISC,” THE FULL COLLECTION OF 1997-99 ISSUES. THIS EVENT IS ALSO NEWSWORTHY BECAUSE, WHILE THE UKRAINIAN PRESS WAS ONLY BEGINNING TO USE THE INTERNET, DEN HAD ALREADY HAD A WEBSITE OF ITS OWN FOR THREE YEARS / Photo from The Day’s archives

Besides, the Den Electronic Library was established in 2000. A thousand discs with newspaper issues for 1997-99 were put out. Incidentally, Den’s observer Klara Gudzyk presented one of such discs to Pope John Paul II in July 2000.

UKRAINE INCOGNITA – “PROJECTS IN A PROJECT”

One of the newspaper’s main online products is the website Ukraine Incognita which contains historical articles published in Den in the whole period of its existence. The project was launched in 2011 as quite a logical continuation of the Den‘s Library and Ihor Siundiukov’s column of the same name.

It took about six months to develop the website. And, in the course of time, it was not confined to historical subjects alone. Ukraine Incognita is today a self-sufficient online project that comprises a lot of various and interesting rubrics – in other words, “projects in a project.”

Accordingly, August 2011 saw the birth of the rubric “Museums Online.” The Ulas Samchuk Museum, the Museum of the Hetmanship, the Mykhailo Hrushevsky Historical and Memorial Museum, the Kolomyia Museum of Hutsul and Pokuttia Folk Art, the Museum of Easter Egg Painting in Kolomyia, et al. are only a click away. In addition, the project makes it possible not only to get acquainted with historical exhibits, but also to find and read detailed information on the history of museums. “As museums in Ukraine are usually not so rich because they are mainly funded by the state, they could not afford a thing like this. So, we decided that it was a very promising niche to be filled,” says Den’s web editor Artem Zhukov.

“Museums Online” is Ukraine’s first project of this kind. Today, the museum archive of Den comprises over 30 online excursions. Before this, only Google offered online museum excursions as part of its Art Project. Besides, the corporation’s project only deals with world-famous museums.

“Ukrainians do not travel much now, but Ukraine does have things to show. We intended to arouse interest in our historical and cultural heritage by showing some elements of a certain museum,” Zhukov explains.

A no less interesting “project in a project” is “Intellectual Map of Ukraine.” Every visitor of the website can receive more online information about a certain populated area on the map of Ukraine. Besides, everybody can tell about the particularities of his or her locality in this way. The main purpose of this project is to help Ukrainians discover Ukraine by way of online tours across the most interesting and little-known spots of this country.

Another Ukraine Incognita item is “Family Album of Ukraine.” “This item is history on a micro-level. When people write about the history of their family, they often describe everyday life, which is of great importance for macro-history,” the Den‘s web editor says. This genre is popular among readers today, for they can directly participate in this. Zhukov notes among other things that every history is written in a particular and natural style, and you can read them like a “living” book.

“However, we decided that there was too much text on our website,” Zhukov says. For this reason, editors began to illustrate some elements graphically. This brought forth a new rubric, “Infographics,” in August 2014. “The first graphics were illustrations to the albums of the Sahaidachny and Kulchytsky family trees. Then we began to depict chronologically-historical events. This is a more attractive form of information presentation, so readers perceive it better,” Zhukov points out.

In August 2013, the project “101 Reasons to Love Ukraine” was launched to mark Ukraine Independence Day. The project initiators – Yaryna Mykhailyshyn and Artem Zhukov – decided to publish infographics on such themes as “Figures,” “Artifacts,” “Events,” and “Places” in three years. Visitors of the Ukraine Incognita website already have access to about 70 infographics.

On the whole, there is a demand for this kind of projects, Zhukov says, for the number of website visitors has gone up almost threefold in the past year. “In the past year, owing to the Maidan, the visit rate has increased very much, approximately fivefold, in all the media. It has diminished a little now but still remains larger than a year ago – by about three times. For the Ukrainians have shown an enormous surge of activity in the Internet,” he says.

Next year Ukraine Incognita will please its readers with one more project – a web photo archive. “This will be a separate website about Den’s photo exhibits,” Zhukov announces.

DEN-TV VISUALIZES TOPICS AND IDEAS

Den also works in a television format. It is Den-TV, a YouTube online channel. “It allows the newspaper to broaden its readership. For now that Ukraine is going through such historic events you can only be a modern media if you visualize information. It is a bonus to our texts and photo reports,” says Maria SEMENCHENKO, editor of the Society section and author of the most popular materials about the Revolution of Dignity.

The project started last May. “It all began as recorded interviews with celebrities. Then we expanded this by recording event-related materials. There were particularly many materials about the Maidan by Ivan Liubysh-Kirdei and Maria Semenchenko,” Zhukov says.

A little later there were interviews with Jamala, Ivan Lenio, and other interesting people. The number of viewings proves that this format of live dialogs – sometimes too long in time for a TV product – is interesting for our readers.

According to Semenchenko, the fast-growing number of Den-TV subscribers and viewings means that Den’s readers do not want to confine themselves to text-based materials and photo reports only and they approve of the visualization of our ideas, topics, and vision of the ongoing events.

To watch a video in fact means to be a participant in the events, when you feel keenly about the tragic Maidan events or put questions to well-known people in the studio. It is important that the reader can see their personal involvement in what the publication is doing. “As we cannot possibly rival television, we experiment with formats rather than focus on the news. If it is the video of an event, it is not a news video, for we try to show this event in broader terms, as a phenomenon. We are now recording this war’s stories – you can see eyewitnesses and hear serious conversations with interesting people. But, naturally, there are more prospects. Our immediate plans are to increase the number of programs, achieve certain regularity, and find a conscientious team which shares our values and is ready to think interestingly,” Semenchenko says. This is what Maria Semenchenko and Artem Zhukov are going to actively work on in 2015.

“A SOLO FROM SOCIAL WEBSITES… WITH AN ORCHESTRA” – A DEBATE PLATFORM FOR DEN’S READERS

The share of Ukrainian users in Facebook is steadily rising. According to Alexa.com, it is Ukraine’s sixth most visited Internet portal. Den also opened its page (facebook.com/TheDayNewspaper) here on May 3, 2011. It has attracted tens of thousands of regular readers in a relatively short time.

According to the newspaper’s web editor Artem Zhukov, Den regards Facebook as “not only an instrument to spread a high-quality content in an intellectual milieu, but also a platform for feedback and communication with readers.”

Incidentally, Facebook helps to find not only an intellectual reader, but also an interesting contributor. It is through this social networking site that editors came to know about and then acquainted readers with the now popular Den bloggers, such as Oleksandr Prylypko and Yurii Kostiuchenko from Ukraine and Dmitry Shusharin from Russia.

Den is actively involving its readers in a candid discussion of topical events. It is for this purpose that the newspaper has set up the community “A Solo from Social Websites... with an Orchestra,” a supranational debate platform for intellectuals from any country and nation. “Essentially, practically all the Ukrainian publications are present in Facebook. Russia is also following this way. Singling out the most interesting publications, one can make a new content now. The point is that there is an enormous array of information which an individual will find very difficult to view completely. Or an individual is short of time or does not read a certain publication because of his or her persuasions,” says Oleksandr PRYLYPKO, project moderator and Den contributor.

The project started at the beginning of the last year. This time span was enough for “A Solo from Social Websites… with an Orchestra” to attract almost 350 intellectuals. The main topics raised in the past year are, undoubtedly, the Revolution of Dignity, the annexation of Crimea, and the war in eastern Ukraine. But Prylypko also singles out another, no less important, topic which the community actively discussed. “There were a lot of life-philosophy ideas. In particular, we watched the degradation of Russian society. What is more, we amply considered materials from various sources. Sometimes these interviews were interesting in that they were taken from peripheral, not metropolitan, sources. For example, a Russian described his vision of the situation somewhere in LiveJournal, and we also used this because it showed certain tendencies in the minds of Russians and their attitude to the ongoing events,” Prylypko explains.

The project can develop still further. “Our ultimate goal is to spread among Den’s readers the idea of attracting more and more intellectuals,” he adds. At the same time, Prylypko says, it is quite a difficult process, for you should examine carefully every participant in this community in order to produce a quality content.