Press Release
Ekaterina Kronhaus
2011 Winner of the Paul Klebnikov Fund Journalism Award: Klebnikov Russian Civil Society Fellowship Summary
August 23, 2011
It has been a great honor for me as a journalist as well as a person to get the Paul Klebnikov Award. Here in Russia, we consider American media as a sort of a gold standard that media should look like. The depth of their research, the quality of their reviews and the skills of their journalists to find sources of information and to make them share the information with media have always fascinated me. So the opportunity to get the first-hand experience with some of the most interesting media and to get to know people engaged in the process of creating that media provided to me by the Paul Klebnikov Fund was the best thing I had ever hoped to possess.
I got the opportunity to meet professionals from Vanity Fair, New York Magazine, The New York Times, The Daily Beast and The Huffington Post. The thing I am most interested in — digital media — allowing us to ignore boundaries and to imagine that we all live in one and the same world. Digital Media is a new thing to everybody, and nobody knows for sure what it should look like and how it can best function. The Paul Klebnikov Fund helped me to meet people in digital departments of various media, and I was happy to get to know them and to exchange ideas and discuss with them the aspects of digital media I was most interested in. I am sure personal acquaintances always make professional links stronger, and I have no doubts the experience I have had will now help me in my professional life.
It was also a great challenge for me to deliver a lecture at the Harriman School of Journalism, and a great pleasure to see all the people interested in what goes on in Russia and in Russian media. I hope I have managed to make the situation clearer to them.
Last but not least, the people working for the Paul Klebnikov Fund are a marvel. I have never dreamed of meeting anybody so friendly and thoughtful. As a neophyte mother coming to New York with a two-month-old baby, I worried about being able to do anything but constantly looking after him. But they did everything for me to feel absolutely at home, and even provided a baby-sitter for the occasions I would not have been able to cope with alone.
So, I would like to whole-heartedly say: Thank you very much! It has been not only an honor, but also a pleasure to meet you and get an award from your Fund!
