Covering Eastern Europe: A week with Daria Sukharchuk

Journalist, presenter and media curator Daria Sukharchuk shares insight into her busy working week

Daria Sukharchuk is sitting against a white background and looking toward the camera.
Daria Sukharchuk/Supplied

If there were one apt phrase to describe working in journalism in 2018, it would be ‘a juggle’. At least, that’s what an average day looks like for Berlin-based alumna Daria Sukharchuk. She expertly juggles several roles, all related to her intersecting interests in human rights, feminism and the Eastern European mediascape. 

As part of her work, Daria is responsible for curating media NGO n-ost’s media conference. Held once a year, the conference focuses on bringing together journalists reporting from/about Eastern Europe and offers a differentiated view from and about the four Visegrad states. Because our two previous conferences were in Moscow and in Kyiv, the Visegrad focus is this year's special feature.

Set to take place in Warsaw from September 20-23, it’s becoming a busy time of year for Daria. So, we’ve invited her to take over our Instagram account and share some insight into what juggling a fast-paced career in media looks like on the ground.

Follow Daria’s week in journalism on instagram

So, what else does Daria do? Here, she shares a little more about her work, her background and her career interests:

"I come from Moscow, but live in Berlin (Cold War romanticism, anyone?), and work for n-ost.org, a media NGO that helps journalists who report from and about Eastern Europe. I'm responsible for the yearly media conference (new programme here), and for presenting a daily press review, Eurotopics, on a local Russian-language TV station called OstWest. This last collaboration led me to start presenting evening news there, together with other cool Russian and German journalists.

I have wanted to be a journalist since I was 21. Working in media now, the best part of it, for me, is showing the complexity of human stories and motivations, and giving the audience something to think about. I enjoy learning new things and playing with new techniques of presenting - so my latest TV job is a source of much fun – that is when I'm not shaking with nerves in front of the camera!

I also love reading in-depth stories that show a different side of well-known societal problems – and I am happy to share them on Newmavens.com (this piece about why men are paid more than women blew my mind!). I’m hoping to get back into writing more of this kind of long-form content too, something that I’ve done less of since taking up the role with n-ost. 

Media in Eastern Europe have one distinct feature: it is a much newer, less stable landscape than what we see in old democracies of the West. This is a challenge since a weaker market is easily dominated by an autocratic regime and/or it's oligarchs. But the lack of established structures also allows for more innovation and a much younger cohort of journalists to be in charge."  

Thanks Daria! Follow Mundus Journalism on instagram for more insight.

If you want to get in contact with Daria about her work or a story idea, you can email her at daria.soukh@gmail.com, or shoot her a message on Facebook. She uses her Twitter somewhat irregularly – mainly to cover events that she attends and for on-the-ground reporting: @marionette_maia