Journalism, History, and a farewell to a new generation
MY FIRST INTERNATIONAL ASSIGNMENT was in a past century, to a place that no longer exists. This week, I have been thinking a lot about that–for the story I covered then dominates Europe as it has not done since, and, on Friday 10th June, was the reason a president spoke to students at the University where I teach.
Every June, I remember my trip to Moscow in that month in 1991. It was my first trip overseas as a journalist–I was working as a producer for the TV news agency, Visnews, (now Reuters TV)–and the last summer of the Soviet Union. I went out originally to cover the election of June 1991 in which Boris Yeltsin was elected as the first ever president of the Russian Federation. What was planned as a week’s assignment ended up lasting well into September. By then, the Soviet Union existed in name only. By the end of the year, even the name had passed from news to history.
Now June means something else to me, too. For ten years now, I have taught in the Journalism Department at City, University of London–since 2016, mostly on the MA International Journalism. It is in June that we say goodbye to our students as they prepare to spend the summer working on final projects and dissertations, and starting their careers.
This year, having been at a day-long meeting outside the University, I arrived a little late at the pub where students and colleagues had gathered. Summer heat had come to London. It was a relief to sit down at an outside table with a pint of cold lager. I was not expecting it when my colleague, and the director of the course we both teach, Dr Zahera Harb, asked me to make a short speech to the departing students. I had only a few seconds to think.
The previous week, the University’s Ukrainian Society had added City to the list of universities who would hear an address from, and have the chance to put questions to, President Zelensky of Ukraine.
Ever since the posters promoting the event had appeared around the campus, students and staff alike had been curious as to whether it would really happen. When Zelensky appeared on the screen in the lecture theatre, there was a gasp of surprise, followed by the raising of countless phone cameras.
Zelensky looked to the future, telling his compatriots at British universities, ‘I can’t build a comfortable state for you, without you’.
So, slightly put on the spot by my colleague’s best of intentions, I too tried to look to the future. But I reflected too on my own 30 years in journalism–and the main lesson I had learnt from reporting international affairs during those decades: nothing lasts forever.
As a teenager in the 1980s, I worried that the Cold War would not end, but instead turn nuclear. In the 1990s and 2000s, when I lived in Russia for long periods, I never imagined the day would come when that country would feel closed off to me, as it has since the invasion of Ukraine.
Yet journalism itself thrives on these kind of changes, heartbreaking though they can be for humanity. One thing that does not change is journalists’ dedication to their task–and nothing can give greater hope to a teacher than seeing their students rise to that challenge. Some of them were kind enough to thank me personally that evening–something that any lecturer knows means an immeasurable amount.
This is my small way of thanking them in return–and of reminding them that even if nothing lasts forever, as journalists, their dedication to telling their audiences the stories that matter must endure: even as empires fall, and seek in violence to rise again.
© Text and images James Rodgers 2022