A Further Glimpse Into AUBG Daily’s First Steps

After meeting the founder of AUBG Daily, Angel Ivanov, it is time to get to know another of the first members, Dilyana Dobrinova. She was the third person who became part of Daily, after Ivanov and Vasil Sariev, who was Vice President in 2012. 

Dobrinova currently has a company for brand consulting which she created with her business partner. For her, the company is a nice mix between her two majors – Journalism and Mass Communication and Business Administration. An interesting fact is that it was founded on February 20, which coincides with Daily’s birthday.

She was a sophomore when AUBG Daily was created. Besides that, Dobrinova was a resident assistant while also being part of Olympics and the Better Community Club. During her senior year she was also in the yearbook committee. She remained in Daily until her graduation in 2014.

“In the beginning, we were mainly friends and friends of friends. We all knew each other from other places. In 2013, other people, who we did not know also started joining,” Dobrinova said.

There were weekly meetings and new rubrics started appearing. She did not have a particular sphere that she focused on when writing. Daily was covering a lot of topics related not only to the campus, but also Blagoevgrad. “We knew that Daily had to continue after Angel graduated because it was a cool idea which made sense and people enjoyed it.”

In the beginning the team struggled with covering everything that they wanted to cover as something was happening all the time. Another thing that made it hard was the fact that as a daily media outlet, they had to have news everyday. There were days when it was difficult to find someone who was free to write an article.

Dobrinova mentioned that everyone in the team wrote except for the four IT people. Even though they were not reporters, she believed that they were an important part of the team.

For her, the other media which existed at the time (De Facto and FlashNews) did not have anything against Daily. Each media had a respect for the other and they were even partners in some cases. “We were more of a community than competitors. It was a healthy competition.” 

She could not choose a favorite moment from her time in Daily, but she noted two moments which she still remembers clearly – the creation of the logo of Daily and the club’s first birthday. 

For her, it is cool that the logo has not changed until this day. “Nowadays everyone wants to change logos all the time. We were sitting with Yoana Katsarska at the front desk and she was really into design at the time. She was drawing and she just drew it. I don’t even remember any big discussions on the topic but it was really cool that it started with this ‘owl the news,’ which stayed.”

The other moment she mentioned was in connection to the first birthday of Daily. In order to spread the word that Daily had a birthday, they had a person dressed as an owl go around campus and hug random people. Laughing, she remembered that the owl had nothing to do with the logo.

Dobrinova believes that Daily has had the power to change and develop throughout the years since she graduated. “We would have never thought that from an online media, someone would want to create a newspaper. But after all, why not?”

For her the most important thing is to find something you are passionate about and focus on it. “High quality work comes after that. You will need to cover topics that are not your favorite, but it is important to know your passion and why you are doing it.”

Dobrinova thinks that the unique thing about Daily is that it is an independent and free media. “Remember that you are independent in your choice."