Mass Comm Week Key Note Address: Vassileva Live Blogging

When I come up the steps to the third floor at 15 minutes before 2 p.m. the hallway is full of students anxiously waiting to get into 320. Just as I try to get in the line Professor Fox opens the door and we all rush in trying to attain the coveted seats near the center aisle where audio and visual is optimum.

Vassileva walks in at about 10 minutes until 2 p.m. and is immediately bombarded by instructors trying to get some face time. She appears happy to oblige.

At only 5 minutes until people are still walking in searching for the last remaining seats.

Technical issues with the DVD player delays the start and a student is asked to help.

Ralista Vassileva warns that she will try not to bore us and so requests any questions are asked whenever they come up - as if she could actually be boring.
Speaks of going back home to her alma mater and being caught on the other side of the camera with gum in her mouth and flip flops on her feet.

You have to be open to different ways of thinking to do what she does.

2:09 p.m. and people are still walking in but now have to walk over those sitting on the floor everywhere.

Lives in the best of two worlds: on t.v. but hardly anyone recognizes her so she can go outside in shorts without makeup.

Ted Turner invested in a separate CNN for the international market, CNN International, and she was given a one year contract to anchor. Says it wasn't easy but 15 years later she can say it worked.

Debuted as an anchor in borrowed clothes - now that outfits color, plum/violet, is her lucky color.

Speaks of being a journalist in a propaganda machine where there is no freedom of press. Wants us to know how lucky we are not to have to struggle with these journalistic hardships.

Thoroughly enjoys the act of reading something to an audience she can't see.

Began in radio still propagating propaganda out of force, but then communism fell. She was given the extraordinary chance to create a new style of journalism, "free media," and watched how the west did things to learn how to cover the first protests against her government.

In 1991 covered the first free elections in Bulgaria - the most meaningful thing she has ever done. Still, she couldn't turn down the CNN offer and all these years later she's still with CNN.

2:19 p.m. Vassileva announces she has prepared a DVD for us but hopes, "it's not too boring."

More technical issues...more delays.

2:22 p.m. The DVD begins, it's a sampling of three of her stories and a listing of the many influential people she has interviewed during her CNN International career.

Video Notes:

Vassileva reporting live from Moscow regarding Andrei Lugovoi denying the poisoning of former KGB spy who died. Vassileva is quite knowledgeable, well spoken and professional.

Vassileva on the changes in Russia where more than billionaires can buy homes now. Vassileva does the voice over on this feature of a young Russian couple who bought their first home. Then she's out on the street, walking with the passers by adding little anecdotes. She's in the home of a family who lives in a two bedroom home with 17 people and only two bathrooms.

2:31 p.m. The DVD is over and Vassileva speaks of the great access journalists have to meet people, go into their homes, as well as powerful politicos.

Great things about journalism according to Vassileva, what she cherishes as a journalist and a human being:

1) The access journalism gives you. It's a huge responsibility to be accurate of the way you write about people and always presenting the truth.
2) The stories of human dignity you are able to witness, getting to experience first hand that people's dignity never dies.

2:37 p.m. Vassileva offers up a little advice before she opens the floor to questions. "As you go out into the real world just take all chances that come to you... The hardest thing is to really find what is your best fit, what will become a passion for you because I can't imagine doing something everyday that I don't like," says Vassileva.

Furthermore, she asked her 90 year old grandmother (that's old for Bulgaria, too) what the secret to her longevity was and her grandmother told her that positivity is key. Despite being a young single mother after losing her husband at age 49 she continued to socialize and stay positive.

"I use all the hard times as growing experiences," ends up Vassileva.

2:42 p.m. She offers up the floor for questions and pleads with students not to be shy as she is nervous as well.

As a journalist Vassileva says that fairness and having her facts straight are most important, "I just want to get to the bottom of the story."

Vassileva speaks profoundly about the affects of communism on a society and on her in particular. "Every story is a story to be told and I never had any set rules besides telling the truth and being as straightforward and honest as possible," says Vassileva.

She goes on to point out that as a journalist you can't publicly advocate strong opinions because it's your job to be objective in answer to why she hasn't considered writing a book.

"There's so much to learn and the more the you learn there more there is to learn," adds Vassileva.

2:50 p.m. a student asks if she has ever been personally in danger as a CNN correspondent in places like Israel.

She answers no, but then goes into a story about how she went on without fear in Israel, as the Israelis advised her to, despite suicide bombings.

2:52 p.m. What story have you covered that has effected you the most?

Most meaningful was her fist, the fall of communism

Most extraordinary interview, where she struggled to keep her composure was with the former soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev because he was responsible for the fall of communism. "Because these are stories, and that interview, that are connected to a story in history that means so much and changed so much."

2:58 p.m. Vassileva speaks of the multiculturalism of CNN International where her co anchor is Australian and very few are native born Americans.

3:00 p.m. She tells about coming to America with her son who didn't speak English and two suitcases between the both of them. She had never written a check or used a credit card and not only didn't she know how to drive but couldn't afford a car. At first it was a headache just to go to the grocery store because it was too overwhelming - too many choices, too many colors.

3:07 p.m. Last question about why she translated the regimes propaganda during her time in Bulgaria before the fall of communism.

She compares that time and life to the recent protests in Burma but points out also that she was very young and naive. She believed there was something happening in Bulgaria. Compares her editor to a sensor. Says she doesn't know where she would be now if things had never changed, if she had never come to America. Explains that it was scary and that if you were blacklisted not only were you in danger, but your whole family.

3:14 p.m. Professor Subervi thanks Vassileva and presents her with a gift of appreciation.