80 year old Bukovyna newspaper goes out of print due to financial difficulties

The Chernivtsi oblast pint weekly Vyzhnytski Obriyi is temporarily going out of print, reports Maryna Kysylytsia, the PE Vyzhnytski Obriyi Media Center director, in a comment to Alyona Chorna, the regional representative of the Institute of Mass Information.

Maryna Kysylytsia says that the newspaper released their last issue for the year today, June 26. The editorial office did not offer subscriptions for the second half of the year and has fulfilled its obligations to subscribers.

“The newspaper's printed version has been suspended due to financial difficulties caused by the ineffective work of Ukrposhta and a significant drop in the advertising market. Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, we have had much fewer ad placement commissions. Effectively, we are left with 10% of advertisers. The money that we received under agreements on covering the Vyzhnytskyi City Council's work and other communities in the district did not even cover printing alone. And we also need it for salaries, taxes. We turned to other communities for support, but we didn’t get it,” said Maryna Kysylytsia.

She clarified that the company itself is not being closed down. They are just suspending the printed version of the newspaper.

“I wrote a resignation letter because I was experiencing professional burn-out, recently it was only me and the digital typesetter working. Now my colleagues, the founders of the newspaper, have announced a job opening for a director and editor. The team is looking for ways to revive the newspaper,” said Maryna Kysylytsia.

She noted that in 2024 the company wrote grant applications, traveled to Kyiv and, finally, got admitted into a project.

“It was a great hope and a chance for Vyzhnytski Obriyi to survive. But with the termination of USAID, we never received the money for the newspaper's development. I hope that there will be other opportunities and my colleagues will soon be able to resume publication of the newspaper,” adds the media outlet's director.

The NCTRB representative in Chernivtsi oblast, Lyubov Nechyporuk, said in a comment to the IMI representative that Vyzhnytski Obriyi had been in print for 80 consecutive years. Its pages contain the history of the Vyzhnytsia district, the stories of its people, issues that concern the community and the search for solutions to them.

“The situation in the print media industry remains difficult. Many traditional regional newspapers are on the verge of survival due to financial difficulties, a drop in subscriptions, and increased printing and logistics costs. In the first half of this year, two Bukovyna-based media outlets, Khotynski Visti and Ridne Slovo, which had been published in the Khotyn and Kelmentsi districts for many years on end, did not announce a new round of subscriptions,” said Lyubov Nechyporuk.

She added that Khotynski Visti and Ridne Slovo had submitted applications to the NCTRB to change the issue frequency: the register indicates that these newspapers will be published once a year going forward.

As IMI reported, the National Council for Television and Radio Broadcasting registered four online media outlets created by Bukovyna Football Club LLC in Chernivtsi oblast.