Interview with Alyona Radina( a young journalist).

‘my way to the dream'

I'm having  a conversation with an amazing girl from Russia. Alyona, is a young student who's going to be a journalist and she'll share with us her way.

So, Alyona, tell us please, who's a journalist for you?

To my mind, journalist is a well-rounded person, who has to be aware of everything, from science to sport, from art to cuisine, from politics to bringing up children. I'm sorry for such a rude interpretation . I think, the main feature of journalists is that they really can find everything.

How did you decide to choose such a profession?
You know, my decision to be a journalist was always with me at that time my aunt was a student of journalism in MSU. I always was good at languages, literature, writing, I got pleasure from those subjects and I wanted to connect my life with it. But I didn't feel like becoming either a linguist or a translator therefore I chose a sphere of journalism.

What's about your personal qualities can make you a good journalist?

I'm shy to highlight my character features. But I suppose, I love people, I can communicate with them easily and feel their psychological state if I need it.
Moreover, I'm purposeful, industrious, I always use information about people that I know as an example in my wor. A real journalist should be able to find out everything he or she needs.

Hhave you got a person who inspires you?

Maybe the example of person who inspires me will not be appropriate because it's not from journalism sphere. But my mum is the best person for me. She teaches me to face all the problems with a smile, never tell anybody my problems and always do what I want in spite of other people's opinion and my fears.

What was the first step, first interview?

The first step was at the 10th form when my first article was printed in the local newspaper. The next, more serious step was in the first year of my education in HSE. It was the task to take an interview with the famous media person independently. I had 3 people, with whom i wanted to have a talk: Olga Shelest, Sergey Brilyov and Alexander Zheleznyak. I found lots of contacts of people, who can сonnect me with them, made thousands of calls but all the efforts were futile because they were away on business trip. But we had only 2 weeks to prepare this assignment, that's why I had to hurry up. Finally, I gave a hard time to Alexander Zheleznyak and he returned from his journey from Africa earlier. You see, Zheleznyak is the main editor of the magazine "National Geographic Traveller", he is a famous journalist, photographer and traveller. It was my dream to have an interview with such a person. Plus, I had to find extra information about him, make up questions, which he hadn't been asked in previous interviews, write an article about him after this, make a photo for a story and a video.

I know that you started working professionally after your first year graduation. Tell me please, how could you reach your aim? What have you learnt while working on radio?

After the first year I had an internship on the radio station "Mayak" as an editor of the program "Park of Culture and Rest" with Kitill Radtsig and Maria Bachenina. It was a great time. I had to make up topics for programs, find experts for the air ,I answered listeners' calls and gave them the opportinity to be in the air and, of course - no matter it was day or night - I always had to keep in touch with broadcasters. After the internship I became aware of the “cuisine” of the radio station, I got a big data base of my own experts' telephones and became good friends with the broadcasters.
During the second year I worked in the magazine "Happy parents" and I wrote articles for both the online and printed versions of the magazine. I had interviews with psychologists about children, peculiarities of bringing up and I translated articles from foreign magazines and web-sites.

There's information that you're travelling a lot. How does travel experience influence the  character of a journalist?

My passion is travelling. But for it, I couldn't meet lots of people (it's the main part of journalistic work because you have to have a great number of contacts), I couldn't practise my English with native speakers and foreigners, I couldn't see real situation in different countries. In fact, I have been to 15 countries: Egypt, Turkey, Thailand, Germany, Austria, The Czech Republic, Poland, Bulgaria, Spain, Israel, Morocco, Cyprus, Ukraine, Mexico and China and Italy.

What's about HSE? Does it help you to broaden your horizons or it's more up more to you to grow professionally?

Of course, my faculty helps me a lot. I'm proud to be a student of HSE. Firstly, we have lots of classes with famous journalists (Sorokina, Romanova, Gubin, Dmitriev, Kemarskaya, Tarasenko, Archangelskiy, Ganapolsiy, Guseinov... the list is endless) and no doubt, nobody can explain real journalism better than real journalists. Besides, we practise a lot. In the first year we imposed our own newspapers, in the second year we made our own radio stations, worked in the studio and edited, now we prepare our own tv shows. Plus, I have opportunities to go on internship to other countries. Last year we went to Rome for the course of ancient literature, this November I’m going to Cologne to the Journalism School.

Tell me, please, about your recent experience in China, what it was like to work there?

China is the best experience in my life. I found out about student organization AIESEC and left my job in the magazine "Happy parents". I had lots of interviews to become an AIESECer and to be a part of the project in China. To tell the truth, I was choosing for a long time among Indonesia, Brasil and China. But I was always interested in China, so I went there for the project "Dare to dream" for 6 weeks. My project was based on teaching pupils English language and Russian culture. Firstly, I was staying for 2 weeks in host family in Beijing and Tianjin to get used to China, after that we went to Xian for travelling, where we stayed for a week. Then we went to Zhangye, where we had our project in summer school and led a 3-day conference for students. I can talk about China for years because I'm crazy about this country, about my best friends there, about food, language, culture - about everything. All my feelings and my thoughts are in my net travelogue, where I wrote about everything every day, plus, I made lots of videos which resulted in a real 3-hour film.
I also began to study Chinese to realize my dream.
In fact, after China everything is head over heels because I don't know what to do in the future, how to connect my life with journalism and China, which program to choose for master degree. My thoughts are always about that happy time in China, about that people. We always chat with each other and have lots of video calls. It's really hard but I adore this condition because it gives me strenghts to overcome all the obstacles to reach my dreams.