14/07/2026
📝 Our alum, Yle’s foreign reporter and long-time Russia correspondent Erkka Mikkonen sees the main goal of his work as providing reliable and considered information. He says that reporting on current affairs requires the ability to balance ambition and time pressure.
Erkka graduated as a Master of Arts in 2009, majoring in Slavic Philology. The study contents in his major mainly focused on Russian language and culture, but Erkka’s passion was found elsewhere. He found his journalist career through his minor.
“I started studying Journalism and Mass Communication as a minor in my first year already. Even back then, I thought I would become a journalist and do work related to Russia. I come from Kouvola in South-Eastern Finland, and my interest in the Russian language was sparked there during upper secondary school, largely thanks to our inspiring teacher,” Erkka says.
Read the whole story on our website 🌏 https://brnw.ch/21x46Hk