Olga Mykhalyuk

I came to «24 Channel» while still a student of the Faculty of Journalism and Television Arts at Kyiv International University. I remember how, with youthful maximalism, I told the editor right from the doorway: "And I also have experience as a presenter". "Fine", he replied and... sent me to a press conference. Back then I did not manage to make my dream come true. But the channel, which started as a Western-style television news agency, the likes of which did not yet exist in Ukraine, gave me the experience of what journalists call "field work".

Spending the night in what was then the Presidential Secretariat, waiting for the pre-dawn signing of the so-called «Universal of National Unity» between former President Yushchenko, Yanukovych and Moroz, was just as interesting as going down a mine, covering street protests or writing about people's lives. And when the Revolution of Dignity began and it was cold and frightening, and my hands were already dropping after yet another attempt by the criminal authorities to disperse the Maidan, it was enough for my colleague, cameraman Serhii Chernikov, to find a shot – a charred New Testament against the backdrop of the Maidan – to pull me back into the whirlpool: to stream, to broadcast, and above all to manage to tell everyone about the total injustice…

When the channel grew, changed its format and started news bulletins with presenters, it was my journalistic experience that opened the way to the morning broadcast studio. But journalism – is forever.