Twenty years online

Among the first readers of Den/The Day’s website on the night of February 7 this year were residents of the US, Canada, and, oddly enough, France. Then, traditionally, thousands of readers in Ukraine, Belarus, the Czech Republic, Poland, Italy, Russia, and Germany began their day with us. We could see by mid-day that hundreds of our admirers in Australia, Japan, China, and… Singapore were visiting the newspaper’s website.

Today, Den/The Day’s website is a convenient platform to search for urgent information on the news feed (where only the key noteworthy events are singled out), a “folio” of the extracts of quality political writing (for the newspaper’s analytical materials and exclusive interviews are adapted for reading from any kind of gadgets); it is a platform for discussions in the commentaries that follow the articles, traditionally interesting opinion polls, infographics, Den’s quotation list, an intellectual calendar, the Den-TV project, and, undoubtedly, authoritative bloggers who the newspaper is, without an exaggeration, proud of. One of Den’s subprojects is the educational platform “Ukraine Incognita,” a collection of history-related articles published in the newspaper in the whole period of its existence. There is also a self-sufficient Internet project that comprises a lot of diverse and interesting rubrics, in other words, “projects in project,” such as “Online Museums.” The user can visit in one click the Ulas Samchuk Museum, the Museum of the Hetmanate, the Historical and Memorial Museum of Mykhailo Hrushevsky, the Kolomyia Museum of Hutsul and Pokuttia Folk Art, the Kolomyia Museum of Easter Egg Painting, etc. Besides, the project allows one not only to get acquainted with historical exhibits, but also find and read detailed information about the history of museums. “Online Museums” is Ukraine’s first project of this kind. Today, Den museums’ archive contains over 30 virtual tours. In addition, the website is an inquiry desk for all the newspaper’s projects: how to take part in the photography competition, on what conditions one can do a course at the Summer School of Journalism, who was awarded the James Mace Prize this year, how to subscribe the newspaper and the glossy Route No. 1, how to buy Den’s Library books in online store, etc. You can easily find this information on the website that turned 20 on February 7.

The history of this website is in fact the history of Internet journalism in this country. Den debuted in the worldwide Web on February 7, 1997. “At the time, the newspaper Den was in fact the first to open an informational window to Ukraine. For, thanks to our website, Ukrainians in various countries got access to the news about our country. Interestingly, the first readers were from Canada,” the newspaper’s technical director Oleksandr PISNYI says. “The Internet allowed foreign readers to receive first-hand information about Ukraine. Incidentally, Liubomyr Romankiv, a Ukrainian American, a forefather of the modern personal computer, told Den that he drew information about his fatherland from such online sources as Den/The Day.”

Oleg KOLESNYK, Sergiy SHARYK, Mykhaylo SKURATIVSKIY

In the 20 years of its existence, Den’s electronic version has passed four stages of changes, Pisnyi says. The first version appeared on February 7, 1997. “We then launched the first four issues of the newspaper in the Internet and a few more the next month. And we made a full-fledged website in the spring. Yet it was just an electronic version of our newspaper. E-versions were made the next day after the publication of a printed newspaper,” the specialist says. “Later, in 1998, the website switched to the automatic mode of work, when materials were simultaneously made available for printers and website editors.”

In approximately the same time, the newspaper began to come out in three languages: Ukrainian, Russian, and English. The English version, The Day, is currently edited by Anna Motoziuk. As the Den editor-in-chief Larysa Ivshyna once noted wittingly, “All of Ukraine is learning English together with Den, while the entire world studies Ukraine by reading The Day.”

The website’s second version came up in 2000. The appearance and the design changed essentially. The content was also complemented with a news feed. As the website was becoming more and more popular in Ukraine and the rest of the world, it began to carry advertisements. Also at this stage, a web team, originally consisting of two specialists, was formed. Five years later, the world saw a third online version of Den. “The system of website management was radically changed. Before that, pages had been made on the basis of templates. So we installed the CMS, which made it far easier to make up the content. And this enabled the web team members to share jobs,” Pisnyi says. A little later, the site was supplemented with the service of polling and voting, the design was altered again, and the editor-in-chief’s column was added. The latest, fourth, version of the website has been in operation since 2013. Today, Den/The Day’s website is a full-fledged information portal full of various rubrics and materials of all genres. At the same time, all materials for the printed, online, and TV versions are prepared by members of the same editorial teams.

To mark the website’s anniversary, the editorial team has drawn up realistic plans of the online platform’s further development. Den/The Day, as a model of the best convergent media, is thanking readers for trust and urging everybody to more actively join the intellectual forces of Ukraine and read the newspaper in any format that suits you: by subscribing to the printed version (https:// day.kyiv.ua/uk/ peredplata), pdf-version (https:// day.kyiv.ua/uk/ elektronna-gazeta) or by using the website (https://day.kyiv.ua).

Many skeptics are alleging today that the printed media have outlived their usefulness and there will be no newspapers in the classical sense of the word very soon. We will not engage into a debate on the prospects of printing or give examples of the circulations of highly-developed European and Asian publications that run into millions. We will only note that Yuliana Lavrysh, a graduate of the Den Summer School of Journalism and an instructor at the Lviv National Ivan Franko University, spoke at an international journalistic conference a few years ago about Den as an example of the best convergent media in this country. And nobody doubts the rosy prospects for this kind of the media.