Veronica Khokhlova, Freelance writer

VK: It was such a natural thing to do for me to do. I returned from the United States - from Iowa City - to Kyiv, Ukraine, in 1998, and, quite naturally, I wanted to continue writing - writing in English. But in 1998, I had very limited access to the Internet, and even reading news in English was a big problem: I remember once spending what seemed like a fortune to me then on a week-old issue of the International Herald Tribune. Eventually, my Internet access situation improved, I began researching venues for some of my stories, and that was when I realized that submitting to online publications could be, in my case, a lot more efficient than having to rely on the highly unreliable and slow Ukrainian postal service. By submitting to the online publications I was familiar with and enjoyed reading, I didn't have to worry about whether my queries were reaching the editors and whether their responses were getting through our mailwoman and into my mailbox: Internet made this sort of communication really easy. Also, it seemed so cool to be able to see my stories once they were published, instead of having to go through this waiting-and-worrying snail mail business again.

My first online piece was published in May 2002 in 3:AM Magazine (by now, the pictures that accompanied the text are no longer there, and some of the online publications that published my stuff are no longer there as well, so here's a link to my pseudo-blog where I keep my stories published online, including the very first one, Evil Trains)

In 2003, when the war in Iraq began, I discovered Salam Pax's blog - and got inspired to start blogging. It seemed like a wonderful way to switch off my inner editor, who was not letting me write as much as I wanted to at the time, and to get rid of the backlog in my head and in my notes. That first attempt at blogging didn't really work, however, and I ended up writing for online publications some more. One of my favorite online outlets, The Morning News, published three of my stories in 2004: here, here, and here.

But then in Sept. 2004, the Beslan school siege happened, and it made me return to blogging, because I had an urge to write all the time then, write spontaneously and selfishly, without having to think too much of the readers who needed the most basic things explained to them. So I was blogging, and very few people were reading me at first, but then I went to Ukraine to vote in the 2004 presidential election and stayed in Kyiv all through the peaceful protests known as the Orange Revolution now, blogging about it, and what was happening in the streets of Kyiv back then was truly amazing, and many people from outside Ukraine were following the situation, a couple of my blog entries were re-published in the Guardian, and I also wrote an op-ed for the New York Times, which brought many more readers to my blog, and I hope that it helped some of the people who were concerned with the situation to get a better picture of what was actually taking place.

From January 2006, I've been monitoring Central and Eastern European citizen media for Global Voices Online, writing digests and doing translations from Russian and Ukrainian, and working with volunteer authors from all over the region. This job is a lot like journalism, in a way, because, every issue draws public response, and much of it is published on blogs and in other citizen media venues nowadays, and quoting or linking to these bloggers is very similar to quoting sources interviewed for traditional media stories.

NF: How do you balance your job, family, etc. in your online journalism career?

VK: I live on a totally crazy schedule: I'm spending much of the daytime with my 4-year-old daughter, and my head is filled with cartoon tunes and other kindergarten stuff, and at night, once my daughter falls asleep, I switch to the serious stuff, politics, geopolitics, human rights, etc. I've been doing this for nearly four years now, and the older my daughter gets, the more difficult it becomes to "balance" work and family, but I'm really used to it, and it does help being a night person, not a morning person.

NF: How do you view blogging and online journalism?

VK: I think I've answered much of it in my answer to question #1, but here are some more thoughts: As a blogger, I'm often unreliable. I'm a sporadic blogger, and I like it. I may be in Moscow when something important is happening in Kyiv and vice versa, and this results in my blog having huge gaps - many things go uncovered on my blog. Sometimes I just don't feel like writing about certain issues or events. And very often, I do not have the time to blog at all. As a blogger, I have this freedom to be selective, sporadic and unreliable. As a journalist, online, print or whatever, I wouldn't be allowed this much freedom. But the fact that I am an unreliable blogger does not reflect badly on citizen journalism in general, because I am just one person out there writing about certain things, and there are plenty more doing the same, filling in the gaps, presenting different views, observing and recording from different vantage points - the blogosphere is a universe made up of individual bloggers, and each one of us may be unreliable every now and then, but as a whole, bloggers/citizen journalists create a consistent picture of the world they are living in, and this picture is in no way inferior to the picture of the world created by the mainstream media.

And while there is lots of talk about which is better, citizen or mainstream journalism, I don't think there is one definitive answer to this: the relationship between the two is often symbiotic at this point, which is a good thing. It is also wonderful that we are living in the age when being an amateur is often no longer considered inferior to being a professional. An amateur is someone who is doing something out of pure love for that activity, and the results are often overwhelmingly amazing - and most of these amazing results of the amateur approach are found on blogs. Think of all the photos taken by people who aren't professional photographers - think of how much you learn from those photos, despite the fact that, by professional standards, they are not perfect. Same with writing.

Have you experienced any gender issues in online journalism?

VK: No, not really.

NF: Is your online journalism read/viewed internationally? Are there certain regions that view your work more than others?

VK: Since I write in English, most of my readers are those who can read English. On Global Voices, a group of wonderful volunteers involved in the Lingua project translates our texts into a number of foreign languages - so part of the audience comes from the non-English-speaking segment as well.

NF: What do students need to learn in order to find careers in online journalism?

VK: The freedom that the Internet provides is invaluable. Something that starts as a volunteer writing project may eventually turn into a full-time job. Networking, interaction with people who share your professional interests is very important.

NF: What are some of the most prominent stories that have been discussed in news recently regarding the country/region you are from? Do you think Americans are as aware of these circumstances as they should be?

VK: There are plenty of stories and they all seem important to me, but I'm biased here, of course. Here's our region's page on Global Voices - http://globalvoicesonline.org/-/world/eastern-central-europe/ (and here are my own GV translations: http://smetanka.blogspot.com/ ). I don't think Americans should be constantly criticized for not knowing much about what's going on in countries like Ukraine or knowing only the most basic things about countries like Russia: many people in Russia and Ukraine have no idea what's going on in countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh or Bolivia, which is sad, but this is life. And, thankfully, our ignorance of certain regions does not keep anyone in those regions from living their lives to the fullest.

NF: What type of relationship do the government and press have in your country/region? Are there any issues with censorship or touchy subjects that many journalists choose not to discuss?

VK: In Ukraine, the biggest problem is not with censorship or journalists' self-censorship. The biggest problem is that our officials very often fail to respond properly to criticism in the media: a very common attitude is: We are a democracy, we have the free press, you can write all you want about me and the corruption in my office, and I'm free to continue living the way I do, despite all the horrible things that you've made public about me. Grassroots activism is the answer here, and there's much of it in Ukraine, but, obviously, not enough yet. Many countries in our region share the same problem.

NF: How do you define a journalist? Do you feel they need to be qualified by means of a higher education or is experience more important? Is it a mix of both?

VK: A mix of both, of course. And the energy, lots of it.

Interviewee: Veronica Khokhlova
Veronica Khokhlova was born in Kyiv, Ukraine. She also goes by “Neeka Smetana.” Neeka is a short form for Veronica and Smetana is her husband’s last name. The city of Kyiv is dear to her and has been changing a lot in the past few years. She is happy to have the memory of how it used to before cars and illegal construction crowded the city. She thinks of Crimea (a peninsula in southern Ukraine, by the Black Sea) as her second home because of the time she spent there as a child, although she goes there rarely now. She also lived in Moscow in 1986-87, following the Chernobyl disaster, which was one of the worst nuclear power plant catastrophes in history. She has also lived in St. Petersburg, but currently lives in Moscow. Her mother is a marine biologist who also worked as a schoolteacher for quite some time. Her father was a tennis coach, but he also wrote about tennis for national Soviet and later, Ukrainian publications. Because much of journalism in the Soviet Union was propaganda then, she hadn’t considered being a journalist until she visited the United States for the first time in 1993. She then realized that is what she wanted to do and it was a natural choice for her thanks to her father. Now, she has her own daughter, Marta, who is nearly 4 years old. Khokhlova completed her undergraduate degree at Kyiv Shevchenko University from 1991-1993 and then 1994-1996 and studied English, German, linguistics and literature. She also attended Rutgers University in a non-degree program from 1993-1994 and took classes in art history, theater, modern dance and literature. She then pursued her master’s in journalism and mass communication at The University of Iowa from 1996-1998. She has always been writing, whether journals or short stories. In 1995, she worked as a fixer for a San Francisco Chronicle’s Kyiv-based freelancer. She found it to be a very educating experience and considers that person to be her first journalism mentor. Within her career, she has written both non-fiction and fiction stories, which have been published online. She is currently the Central and Eastern Europe Regional Editor and the Ukrainian/Russian/Belarusian Language Editor at Global Voices Online.  (http://globalvoicesonline.org/). When she’s not writing short stories or writing journalistic pieces, she writes for her own blog (http://vkhokhl.blogspot.com/). She is also an avid photographer.

Interviewer: Nawaar Farooq
Nawaar Farooq was born in Knoxville, TN in 1986. Her father is currently a professor of economics and finance at the Royal University for Women in the Kingdom of Bahrain and her family moved quite a bit within the United States when she was younger. She lived in California, Illinois, and is settled in Iowa for now. Her hometown is West Union, Iowa, a quaint town in Northeast Iowa. She comes from a small family. Her parents are from Bangladesh and she has one sister and two dogs, all of which she loves dearly. Farooq is currently working on her master’s degree in journalism and mass communication at The University of Iowa. She received her B.A. in journalism and mass communication and psychology with a minor in religious studies from the University of Iowa in 2008. Additionally, Farooq works as a portrait photographer at a photography studio, where she has worked for three years. She plans on working as a publication designer and/or a photojournalist for a magazine in the future. She is particularly interested in South Asian studies and civil rights. She is interested in gender and mass communication because it is an important subject to be familiar with as a minority female journalist. One has to know about the struggles both women and minorities faced in the field of journalism (as well as other fields) to fully appreciate the rights they have today. It is also important to note that although much progress has been made, there is still a lot more to accomplish.

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