Magazines join the resistance
Read about Ukraine's magazine makers in the earliest days of Putin's war
Hello magazine makers,
Another week, another American Psycho Drama.
This time it’s the long-suffering people of Ukraine being thrown under the bus in the name of gangster capitalism.
While we can’t do anything about the US administration’s attempted extortion of Ukraine’s mineral wealth, we can refuse to forget the real story.
Zelensky is not a dictator, Putin is.
Ukraine did not start the war, Putin did.
Donald Trump is a liar.
The list of magazines calling out Little Donny Moscow is long and varied - from The Spectator to Private Eye, Newsweek to Mother Jones - and I hope magazines will always be part of the resistance.
If you agree, but you're exhausted and need a little inspiration, here’s an article I wrote for issue 2 of The Grub Street Journal, telling the story of how Ukraine’s magazine makers continued to take care of business during the earliest days of Putin’s war.
Again, a story about the focus and tenacity of magazine makers is my best response right now for Trump and his venal goons.
Slàinte Mhath,
Peter
War Efforts
The idea of living and working through a war is almost unimaginable, but Ukraine's brave magazine makers have shared glimpses of what it is like – and why they keep going.
* This article was first published in August 2023.
We all know making magazines is hard. Not just ‘it takes a bit of thought’ hard. Full on, show up day after day, week after week, month after month hard. It’s not life or death though, not for most of us. Sadly, right now in Ukraine, it can be.
In June, at the FIPP World Congress, Andrii Vdovychenko, CEO of Burda Ukraine, had a go at explaining to the audience of 400 publishing professionals what doing their job in a warzone might be like.
He avoided sharing the noise of the air raid sirens that have sounded 25,128 times between the war starting in February 2022 and May 2023. He didn’t spend much time talking about being separated from his own family, about the 5 million Ukrainian refugees in Europe or the 7 million people displaced inside the country.
Instead, he just thanked everyone who has helped support Ukraine in its fight against Russia… and moved on to talk about the business of making magazines in a warzone.
Bombings and blackouts
Burda Media Ukraine was the first publisher in Ukraine to start printing again after the invasion and Andrii was clearly very proud. Not just of his business, but of the people making its magazines.
The struggle to keep getting magazines out the door saw two of Burda Ukraine’s staff trapped inside the company’s warehouse after it was shelled. They were forced to hide in the bombed-out building for two days, hiding from Russian troops.
“Luckily, they survived”, Andrii explained to the hushed audience. “Now our warehouse is working again and started deliveries of magazines to the newsstands in May 2022.”
Even before printing began again, Burda Ukraine collected all its unsold stock and redelivered them to bring in some much-needed cash. There were closures – the company's portfolio went from 27 titles to just six. But being back in business meant Andrii could pay his team and start getting magazines into the hands of readers.
Personal sacrifice
Just ahead of Andrii's presentation, I managed to grab 10 minutes with Anastasiya Ravva of Ukraine’s Espreso TV. Espreso publishes online and on YouTube, where it has 1.8 million subscribers.
When the war broke out, Espreso moved its whole operation from Kyiv, where it had been headquartered for a decade, to the relative safety of Liviv near the Polish border. “It’s not safe, of course,” said Anastasiya. “We don’t have any safe places in Ukraine.”
She told me that, for a year now, Espreso’s staff have been focused on telling the story of the Ukrainian people’s fight for survival and of the struggle of the country's armed forces. And then she told me about her colleague Vasyl Yavorskyi.
Vasyl was a video director at Espreso who volunteered to fight with Ukraine’s armed forces – and was killed on the frontline. “It’s important to me that everyone knows his story,” she said.
From fashion to firing guns
Making sure Ukraine’s story is told underpins so much of what I have heard and read about media people working in Ukraine.
This time last year, my Media Voices co-host Chris Sutcliffe spoke with Marie Claire Ukraine’s editor-in-chief Iryna Taterenko. He said she told him the magazine had gone from publishing celebrity and fashion news to explainers about how to fire guns and how to cope emotionally through an armed conflict.
Iryana said: “It might be cool to interview some fashion designer about their recent collections … but my latest project is interviewing a cleaning lady who cleans up after the daily bombings.” Other Marie Claire stories she mentioned emphasised the safety benefits of always having two walls around you, provided the addresses of nearby blood banks, and offered advice on how to give birth in a shelter.
“Our first digital cover was dedicated to victims of sexual violence by the occupiers,” Iryana told the Telegraph in a February 2023 interview.
In the same interview, Iryana explained that Marie Claire’s beauty editor Olha volunteered to fight with Ukraine's territorial defence, and is now the only woman in a tank battalion. She might be on the frontline, but she is still filing – working on articles about candles for blackouts and caring for your hair in extreme conditions.
‘Putin is a f*cker’
A sign in a Kyiv coffee shop window reads: ‘Putin is a f*cker, the work schedule may change’. And just in the world of coffee-making, producing magazines in a warzone is unpredictable.
With staff scattered inside and outside the country and infrastructure stretched at best, Marie Claire didn’t get a print edition out until the October after the invasion. Andrii at Burda Ukraine explained that papers make it to press, but only thanks to donated generators and DIY distribution. And of course, audience attention has been shattered. Peacetime reading habits have been interrupted, not by competing apps or streaming services, but by the sound of sirens and shelling. And yet, the work goes on.
Andrii said it's about providing ‘messages of hope and courage’. Marie Claire’s Iryana told the Telegraph, “We will continue to fight and are grateful for global support. And through that, we are bringing out our magazine.”
She tells the story of a woman she met in Poland who thanked her for what Marie Claire was doing. The woman, who had fled Mariupol, said to her, “Glossy magazines are about the celebration of life every day,” and added: “There have not been any celebrations for a few months now”.
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