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August 20, 2008

THN grad working to train journalists in Poland

By Arthur E. Foulkes

TERRE HAUTE — A Terre Haute North Vigo High School graduate is helping shape journalism and media in Eastern Europe.

Kehrt Reyher, a 1972 graduate and Terre Haute native, has been active in media development in Poland since the fall of the nation’s former communist government nearly 20 years ago.

“I became just really fascinated with the country,” Reyher said of his first visit to Poland in the early 1990s as a writer for the Detroit News. “You could see something was going to happen there.”

Reyher has launched the Modern Media Institute in south-central Poland in an 18th century palace he and his wife, Marzenna, who defected from Poland around 1985, bought a few years ago. The institute is “dedicated to the advancement of independent media by inspiring journalists and media business leaders across New Europe and the former states of the Soviet Union,” according to the institute’s Web site.

“We want to train professionals,” Reyher said.

At present, most media professionals in Poland are sent away by their companies for training, often out of the country. Reyher’s hope is that these professionals soon will be sent to his institute for continuing education instead. “That’s kind of the opportunity that we see,” he said.

After writing a series of articles in Poland for the Detroit News in the early 1990s, Reyher stepped into the media consulting business in the former Eastern Bloc nation. Those were wide open days for media in the newly democratic country, which had been under communist rule for decades.

“Nobody knew what was going on in media,” Reyher said. “Nobody really understood how the media worked, how commercial media worked,” he said.

In those early years, Reyher consulted with two Polish newspapers, one of which, a tabloid called Super Express, is one of the most popular newspapers in Poland today. This consulting work eventually evolved into a business-to-business magazine called Media & Marketing Polska, which is the country’s only weekly publication covering marketing communications.

“It was just a perfect moment,” Reyher said of launching the publication. “Everything was just exploding at that time. That brought us a lot of business immediately and the business just took off as fast as you could imagine. We were profitable within three months, basically,” he said.

Recently, Reyher sold 60 percent of Media & Marketing Polska’s parent company, VFP Communications, to a German trade publisher. Money from the sale helped him, his wife and three other partners invest in the new media institute, he said.

The Modern Media Institute, which will be housed in the 10,000-plus-square-foot palace, is modeled after what is now called the Poynter Institute, a school for journalists and journalism teachers in St. Petersburg, Fla., Reyher said, adding that he studied at the south Florida institute twice. “It had a big influence on my career,” he said, adding that the founder of the Poynter Institute, the late Nelson Poynter, also has Wabash Valley ties. Poynter, who went on to run the St. Petersburg Times, was born in Sullivan, according to the Web site for the Poynter Center at Indiana University.

Reyher, who, despite 16 years in Poland, still speaks with a Hoosier accent, has deep Wabash Valley ties. He got his undergraduate degree in English at Indiana State University, worked at the Parke County Sentinel, the Linton Daily Citizen and the Terre Haute Star before enrolling in Indiana University, where he earned a master’s degree in journalism in 1984.

Interestingly, Reyher’s adopted brother also is a Terre Haute standout. Before Reyher was in high school, his family adopted Stephen Cooksey, one of the most accomplished athletes in Terre Haute history and today the head track-and-field coach for the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.

“We were just there for them,” said Lea Reyher-Long, Reyher’s mother, when asked how she and her late husband Bill happened to raise such accomplished children. Her secret was being a stay-at-home mom and “we were strict,” said Reyher-Long, who still lives in Terre Haute. She also said, “I think I’m just lucky.”

Being a Hoosier living in Poland has not been especially difficult for Reyher, he said. “I’ve always felt very well accepted,” he said. Having a Polish wife, an interest in the nation and expertise in a field that was in its infancy when he arrived, all helped, he said. Furthermore, the approach to journalism he has promoted in Poland has been very well received.

“We always took a very orthodox American journalistic approach,” Reyher said. While much of the Polish media is very politicized, “They know we don’t monkey around … [or] play favorites. I think we are very well respected,” he said.

As for his mother in Terre Haute, she said the family always knew Reyher was smart and could achieve whatever he put his mind to, she said. “He was considered a genius” in school, Reyher-Long said. “His dad used to say he was out of this world.”

Arthur Foulkes can be reached at (812) 231-4232 or arthur.foulkes@tribstar.com.

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