Nataliya Gumenyuk

Nataliya Petrivna Gumenyuk (Наталія Петрівна Гуменюк; alternate Romanization: Natalia Humeniuk; born 1983) is a Ukrainian journalist and author specializing in foreign affairs and conflict reporting. She is a co-founder and CEO of the Public Interest Journalism Lab, and a co-founder of the independent media Hromadske. She is the author of several books, including The Lost Island: Tales from the Occupied Crimea (2020).

Early life and education
Nataliya Gumenyuk was born in Birobidzhan in 1983. She graduated with a bachelor's degree from the Institute of Journalism of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (Kyiv National University; KNU) (2000–2004). She earned a master's degree in international journalism from Örebro University, Sweden (2005–2006).

Career
Gumenyuk took the course "International Media Systems" at the Mohyla School of Journalism in Kyiv. From 2002 to 2004, she was the editor-in-chief of the independent student newspaper Nasha Sprava. In 2002–2003, she was an international journalist on Novyi Kanal. Also in 2003, she was an international journalist for 5 Kanal. In 2003–2004, she was an international journalist for the fact-check program ICTV. In 2004, she worked for the "ProfiTV News Agency". In 2005–2007, she was the head of the international department, a special correspondent for the "K1" TV channel and the author and host of the "One Reportage" program.

From 2007 to the end of 2009, she headed the international department of the INTER TV channel and also served as a special correspondent. Towards the end of this period, in 2009, for the first time among Ukrainian TV channels, INTER was nominated for an Emmy Award in the News category for its coverage of the South Ossetian War (reporter Ruslan Yarmolyuk). In 2009, Gumenyuk also did an internship at BBC World News on HARDtalk and at The Guardian and The Independent.

At the end of 2009, she was fired from the INTER TV channel without explanation. This caused a wave of outrage among her colleagues, who collected more than 70 signatures against her release. After that, some journalists resigned of their own free will (including Roman Vintonov). Afterwards, she did not get a job in other media and became a freelancer.

In 2010–2011, Gumenyuk was the editor-in-chief of the project "Ours" (INTER, studio "07 Production") whose focus was on fifteen TV programs about Ukrainians who left Ukraine for various reasons and became successful abroad, including in Norway, Brazil, South Africa, India, China, among others. Gumenyuk took part in the search for sponsors of the project.

Covering the Arab Spring
After "Ours", Nataliya began a trip at her own expense to cover the events of the Arab Spring. As a result of the trip she wrote a book “The Maidan Tahrir”.

She worked as an international freelancer mainly for Ukrainian publications, such as The Ukrainian Week, Ukrayinska Pravda, Esquire Ukraine, studio 1+1, radio Voice of the Capital, as well as for some foreign media, such as OpenDemocracy Russia (UK), RTL-Netherlands, and M6 (France).

Work on Hromadske TV
In 2013, Gumenyuk became one of the initiators for the creation of the independent online media Hromadske TV. She run a project "Hromadske international", an English version of the media. In May 2015, she was elected a head of the NGO "Hromadske TV". In February 2020, Nataliya resigned from Hromadske to show disagreement with the non-renewal of a contract with an editor-in-chief of Hromadske Anhelina Karyakina.

While working on Hromadske she has been focused on reporting the war in Eastern Ukraine, occupation of Crimea, and also international relations. She was also the host of The Sunday Show, an English speaking project explaining Eastern Europe for the international audience. In February 2020 she has published the book “The Lost Island: Tales From The Occupied Crimea” based on 6 years of her trips to occupied peninsula. It was translated into Russian and German.

Launch of the Public Interest Journalism Lab
In 2020, Nataliya Gumenyuk and other Ukrainian journalists and communications specialists founded Public Interest Journalism Lab, an experimental laboratory that promotes constructive discussion around complex social issues. Lab conducted its previous research in partnership with the Kharkiv Institute for Social Research, Lviv Media Forum, and the Arena Program, co-directed by Peter Pomerantsev and Anne Applebaum.

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Lab has been focused on covering events in Ukraine for the international and Ukrainian media, documenting war crimes as part of The Reckoning Project: The Reckoning Project: Ukraine Testifies, and creating an online chronicle of Ukrainian resistance as part of the Life in War project. Within The Reckoning Project, Anne Applebaum and Nataliya Gumenyuk wrote an article for The Atlantic on how Russian invaders unleashed violence on small-town residents.

Gumenyuk has been reported from major affected areas by Russian invasion: the city of Bucha, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Kherson regions.

Other activities and projects
In 2020–2021 Gumenyuk focused on media research, as well as producing a number of documentaries.  'The Gongadze Case as a Mirror of an Epoch' is a documentary multimedia project released on the 20th anniversary of the "tape scandal" that unfolded after the murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze.

Nataliya Gumeyuk was the head, producer, and editor-in-chief of the multimedia documentary project Our 30 years dedicated to the history of the 1990s presented by Ukrainians themselves. This project was produced by the Public Interest Journalism Lab team to mark the 30th anniversary of Ukraine's independence. As a result, 9 documentaries, 20 podcasts, special projects, and dozens of short video testimonies of that time were released on the air and on the platforms of the Public Broadcaster of Ukraine. Gumenyuk co-authored the film on the return of the Crimean Tatars from deportation.

Gumenyuk is a member of the Council for Freedom for Speech Under the President of Ukraine, as well as the Independent Media Council.

Personal life
In Minsk, on August 12, 2017, she married Peter Ruzavin, a reporter for Mediazona and a former journalist of the Russian TV channel Dozhd.

Awards

 * 2009 — Laureate of the Anatoliy Moskalenko Foundation for the Development of Journalism for achievements in journalism.
 * 2013 — Silver medal in the competition of artistic reporting "Samovydets" (for the report "How the desert sounds where the water begins", a collection of emotional notes from Jordan, Egypt, Iran, Tunisia).
 * 2017 — was selected for The New Europe 100, the fourth annual list of central and eastern Europe’s brightest citizens changing the region’s societies, politics, or business environments. The list was created by Res Publica, the Warsaw-based journal; Google; the Visegrad Fund; and the Financial Times.
 * 2019 — in the list of 100 most influential women in Ukraine by Ukrainian weekly magazine Focus .
 * 2020 — book The Lost Island: Tales From The Occupied Crimea by Nataliya Gumenyuk was included in the list of the best book of 2020 by PEN Ukraine—in the category "Travel essays/reports"; this book also won a special prize within the Best Book Award 2020 by the Book Forum Lviv.
 * 2021 — a documentary The Murder of Gongadze: 20 Years of Searching for the Truth—by Natalia Gumenyuk, Maxim Kamenev and Anna Tsyhyma—won "Best Publicistics" award within "Honor of the profession" prize.
 * 2022 — Nataliya Gumenyuk is awarded a Free Media Award for "her truth-seeking reports on the horrors of war from a variety of locations such as Kharkiv, Bucha and Mykolajiv in Ukraine".
 * In June 2022, as the head of the Public Interest Journalism Lab, Gumenyuk received the 2022 NED Democracy Award.

Books

 * Veni, Vidi, Scripsi: Світ у масштабі українського репортажу (Veni, Vidi, Scripsi: The World on the Scale of Ukrainian Reporting) (collection of reports by various authors), Kyiv: Tempora, 2013.
 * Майдан Тахрір. У пошуках втраченої революції (Tahrir Square. In search of the lost revolution.), Kyiv: Political Criticism, 2015.
 * Загублений острів. Книга репортажів з окупованого Криму (Lost island. Book of reports from the occupied Crimea.), Lviv: Old Lion Publishing House, 2020.