Print Journalism Training Program:

• Print Journalism: IREX provides basic and advanced journalism trainings for staff of selected independent regional newspapers across Ukraine. Workshops concentrate on civic journalism, which calls for media to work toward providing constructive, useful, and interesting information to their audience. Topics for trainings are widely varied, but include things such as basic reporting, editing, covering business and economic topics, newspaper design, photojournalism, planning long-term coverage, covering politics and elections, covering HIV/AIDS, and more.
• Media Management: IREX helps media managers build profitable and sustainable businesses through executive development trainings. As a result of regular participation in IREX trainings, two target newspapers from Eastern Ukraine---RIA Corporation’s new daily 20 minutes (Vinnytsya) and Kafa newspaper (Feodosia, Crimea)---have exponentially improved their positions as regional media market leaders. RIA’s corporate advertising department achieved 10 percent growth, and circulation skyrocketed in early 2005 from 24,000 to 36,000 copies. Kafa newspaper increased its circulation by 5,000, reaching 35,00, and advertising revenue showed a 135 percent increase by March 2005. Newspapers in Sumy and Kherson likewise have expanded.
• Subgrants With subgrants to the Ukrainian Association of Press Publishers (UAPP) and the Crimean Informational Press Center (IPC)---and joint trainings with both of the nonprofit organizations---IREX strives to increase the resources and services available to independent media through indigenous media associations.

UAPP: An association of independent, profitable print media publishers in Ukraine, UAPP provides educational, legal, and informational support to its members. As a result of UAPP’s recent lobbying efforts, Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers preserved VAT privileges in the 2005 state budget for the sale of newspapers and magazines. UAPP’s Legal Hotline Project provided 1,535 legal consultations to publishers between November 2004 and April 2005. And its two-year lobby effort has resulted in bringing print media privatization to the forefront of media issues in Ukraine.

IPC: As a result of IPC workshops, many participating newspapers improved the quality of their 2004 presidential elections coverage. Between February and April 2005, IPC conducted three seminars for a total of 28 regional journalists; organized 46 press conferences devoted to human rights, freedom of speech, corruption, and cross-national tolerance and civic education; and hosted 1,543 visitors at the IPC Center, most of whom took part in practical exercises and activities and accessed the center’s on-line resources and/or its specialized media library.

Ukrainian Print Media Exchange Program (UPMEP)

Ukrainian Print Media Exchange Program  (UPMEP) was successfully launched and officially started with the 2-day training session for representatives of print media outlets in November 2005. The goal of the program is to support 16 regional print media outlets offering opportunities for internships, sharing the best business practices though exchanging visits and helping to develop the strategy of the partnership cooperation.

Legal Defense and Education Program (LDEP)

• Media Law: Ukrainian media professionals show a strong need for practical information about the complex and constantly changing laws affecting their industry. The radical changes in defamation and privacy law wrought by the new Civil Code of 2004, in particular, has required fundamental rethinking of defense strategies in Ukraine. With 25 IREX-trained media defense attorneys nationwide, the IREX legal staff has proved indispensable in devising these new strategies and training the nation’s lawyers in their practice. 
• Training: LDEP provides workshops and seminars on media law to journalists, lawyers, and judges across Ukraine. Having worked to train Ukrainian judges in democratic, European standards, LDEP saw the fruits of its labor when the nation’s Supreme Court invalidated the second round of 2004 presidential elections and called a third re-run-off.
• Hotline: During the 2004 elections, the LDEP Legal Center advised 180 Ukrainian media professionals, voters, and election officials through a national troubleshooting hotline.
• Newsletter: Based on feedback from trainees and lawyers, LDEP’s legal newsletter, Bulletin, continually enables Ukrainian media law professionals to make appropriate decisions during lawsuits and contributes to fair standards in independent media development.
• Assistance: IREX provides legal referrals and financial assistance to cases in which the LDEP legal council---a group made up of Ukrainian lawyers, journalists, and human rights activists---believes that the government or another power structure has violated the rights of a journalist or media outlet. IREX-trained lawyers have a very high success rate in winning such cases.