1998: THE YEAR IN REVIEW: At The Weekly, life goes on... (12/27/98)

1998: THE YEAR IN REVIEW

At The Weekly, life goes on...

When last we wrote, The Ukrainian Weekly was a mere 64 years old. This year we turned 65. Certainly an age considered respectable ...

It was a year full of departures and new beginnings, a difficult year for those of us who remained on the abbreviated staff of The Ukrainian Weekly - and still managed to put out issues each and every week containing an amazing 1,406 articles.

We bid farewell to our colleague Khristina Lew on January 23, her last day with the UNA's English-language publication. Ms. Lew resigned from The Weekly's editorial staff to take on the position of director of public relations for "Focus: Ukraine," a get-the-vote-out effort in Ukraine led by the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America and funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development through the Eurasia Foundation. Ms. Lew had joined The Weekly staff on November 26, 1990. Three months later she was named an assistant editor at the paper. In the November of 1991, while on a three-week leave from The Weekly, Ms. Lew participated in the "Aktyv Voli" campaign in Ukraine's eastern oblasts, which was aimed at promoting support for Ukrainian independence in preparation for the December 1, 1991, referendum. Ms. Lew served three tours of duty at the Ukrainian National Association's Kyiv Press Bureau: August through October 1992, July through September 1995 and mid-July through August 1997.

Due to cutbacks mandated by our publisher, we were never allowed to fill the vacancy created by Ms. Lew's departure. Thus, we were down to two and a half staffers in Parsippany, one in Kyiv and one in Toronto.

Our April 12 issue was the last in a long line of Weeklies published at the UNA's Jersey City facility, located in what was once the Ukrainian National Association's headquarters building; it was the last to be printed on the UNA's own Goss offset press. The first run off that press was The Weekly's November 15, 1975, issue - then still a four-page broadsheet edition - soon after the press had been installed in the UNA's then new headquarters building at 30 Montgomery St. Later, the Ukrainian-language Svoboda began to be printed daily on that press. (It wasn't until May 26, 1976, that the editorial staffs of Svoboda and The Weekly moved into the new 15-story building from the previous UNA building located a few blocks away at 81-83 Grand St.) Those same offset presses were the ones that printed The Ukrainian Weekly's first 16-page tabloid issue dated July 4, 1976. Later, with the installation of a third Goss unit on December 17, 1991 (our gift that year from St. Nicholas, we mused in our yearend issue), that press printed our first 20-page issue dated February 2, 1992, and the first 24-pager dated May 17, 1992.

But the shutdown of the Svoboda print shop for us was also a story of the people who worked there for many years - in particular the four employees of the printing and expedition operations who were laid off as a result of the closing. We wrote: "The shutdown of the Svoboda Press print shop marks the end of an era. Therefore, it is fitting that we say a quiet thank you to the many hard-working and dedicated employees who saw to it that the UNA's publications were printed and sent to faithful readers around the globe."

1998 was also the year we marked the sad demise of the Svoboda Ukrainian-language daily newspaper, up to then prestigiously known as "the oldest and largest continuously published Ukrainian-language daily in the world."

As we explained in our June 28 editorial, "as of July 1 the Svoboda daily is no more. The reasons for its demise are complex. The easiest way to explain the decrease in its frequency from a daily (published five times per week) to a weekly is to simply cite the decision made by the recently concluded 34th Regular Convention of the Ukrainian National Association. It was claimed that the main financial drain on the UNA were its publications; that due to financial considerations the UNA could no longer sustain a daily."

As Svoboda stood on the threshold of a new beginning, we took a look back at that newspaper's unparalleled record of service. From its very inception on September 15, 1893, Svoboda was a builder and initiator. As one former editor-in-chief, Anthony Dragan, wrote: "In the beginning was the word." Indeed, already in its fourth issue, Svoboda, which billed itself as the people's newspaper, called for the establishment of a national organization to serve as the protector and benefactor of our community. Less than four months later the Ruskyi Narodnyi Soyuz (which later became the Ukrainskyi Narodnyi Soyuz) was born.

Svoboda also was an enlightener. It promoted education among the people, encouraged their political involvement in American life and raised their national consciousness. It was Svoboda, according to immigration historian Dr. Myron B. Kuropas, that forged the Ukrainian national identity in America.

The paper was a crusader as well. It promoted Ukrainian national aspirations and fought for Ukraine's independence, revealed the truth about the Great Famine, spoke out for displaced persons following World War II and defended the independence newly regained during this decade. It spearheaded the campaigns for a Taras Shevchenko monument in Washington and the establishment of Ukrainian studies at Harvard University, and it was an advocate for repressed and persecuted Ukrainian activists for human, national and religious rights.

And, as our communities lost their geographic cohesiveness, Svoboda became our network. It kept us in touch with one another. It kept us informed about developments both in Ukraine and in our diaspora, as well as closer to home. It gave us a forum to share our achievements and losses, our good news and bad.

Svoboda Editor-in-Chief Zenon Snylyk, who retired after 18 years in that position and 18 years prior to that as editor of The Ukrainian Weekly, understood full well the great import of the Svoboda daily. He knew that Svoboda's role was to serve the community and the Ukrainian nation, and that these were his "imperatives" as its editor-in-chief. He knew that the Ukrainian-language daily was a fraternal benefit crucial to the UNA's very identity as a fraternal organization, that Svoboda was its public countenance, that in the eyes of the public Svoboda and the UNA were one and the same. He also knew what his illustrious predecessors knew: that through Svoboda the UNA supported our community and our nation.

As the Svoboda daily completed its last press run on June 30, we bid it adieu.

As the new Svoboda weekly appeared on July 1, marking a new phase in the life of this proud newspaper, we wished our sister publication well.

At The Weekly we tried to introduce some innovations this year. For example, we started off the year with a series called "Doing Business in Ukraine" written by Roman Woronowycz of our Kyiv Press Bureau. Sensing that there still was not enough in our paper about the business world, in October we introduced a new feature which we dubbed "Business in Brief." On December 13 we introduced a new monthly column, "Focus on Philately" written by Dr. Ingert Kuzych.

As this year was a year of parliamentary elections in Ukraine, Mr. Woronowycz filed a series of candidate profiles in an attempt to depict the diversity of the political spectrum that existed at that point in time in Ukraine. He and our colleagues Yarema Bachynsky, R.L. Chomiak and Marta Dyczok filed reports on the elections from places as far-ranging as Kharkiv, Symferopol, Lviv and Radekhiv.

Our second annual pre-summer supplement, "A Ukrainian Summer" published on June 7, gave our readers some ideas about "where to go, what to do ...," including a new tourist destination being billed as "Kalyna Country" in western Canada.

In August, we celebrated the seventh anniversary of Ukraine's independence along with the rest of the Ukrainian world. Our special issue on that occasion took a different approach this year, publishing personal reflections on independent Ukraine as well as focusing on the Ukrainian public's perceptions.

Our Toronto bureau, in the person of Andrij Wynnyckyj, was especially busy in the last quarter of the year, what with the Ukrainian Canadian Congress conclave in Winnipeg in October and then the seventh convocation of the Ukrainian World Congress in Toronto in December. (We think Andrij is still digging out from under his papers ...)

Meanwhile, at the home office, we kept Irene Jarosewich busy on the Church beat. covering major Church events, doing interviews, and gathering news on the Sobor of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the U.S.A. (because no press was allowed to be present at the sessions) ... besides all her regular duties. Ika Koznarska Casanova, kept busy as our arts editor. Thank goodness for our stalwart production staff: Awilda Rolon and Serge Polishchuk. (Pity they no longer give Stakhanov awards ...)

And then, of course, there are our loyal regular correspondents: Yaro Bihun in Washington, Chris Guly in Ottawa, our columnists (Dr. Kuropas, Andrew Fedynsky, Orysia Paszczak Tracz, Helen Smindak, Ihor Stelmach) and commentators, and numerous free-lancers and community activists who have a special connection to this newspaper. What would we do without them?

Proof that Weekly editors never really leave The Weekly came repeatedly during the year. And that is how we gained a Disney World correspondent, Natalia Warren, who kept us posted concerning developments at EPCOT over the proposed Ukrainian Pavilion. Ms. Warren, then Ms. Dmytrijuk, was on The Weekly staff in 1984-1985.

Since this was our 65th anniversary year, we prepared a two-page spread in our October 4 issue to mark that milestone. We published an editorial headlined "Continuing the mission 65 years later"; focused on the founding of The Weekly in our "Turning the pages back ..." feature; reprinted UNA Supreme President Nicholas Murashko's statement that announced the premiere issue of The Weekly on October 6, 1933; announced the unveiling of The Weekly's collection of materials about the Great Famine located on our official website, (http://www.ukrweekly.com/); and printed The Weekly Questionnaire, which asked for readers to evaluate the newspaper's contents and performance. (More on the questionnaire in early 1999 when we announce the results of our tabulation of readers' responses ...)

Soon thereafter Editor-in-Chief Roma Hadzerwycz received an anniversary greeting from Ukraine's ambassador to the United States, Dr. Yuri Shcherbak, who stated: "Thanks to the professionalism of your editors and reporters, you are the first to report on many events in the life of the Ukrainian community in the United States and Canada. Through its effective and analytical work, your publication attracts the attention of officials of the U.S. administration and Congress. You have established strong communications with representatives of the Ukrainian government at the Embassy of Ukraine in Washington. The pages of The Ukrainian Weekly publicize profound discussions of the most significant topics in the history of the Ukrainian nation, both in the homeland and abroad. ... The newspaper has earned for itself many true friends, who at any moment could be organized into a Society of Friends of The Ukrainian Weekly. For the future, we wish The Weekly much creative success, a high level of authoritativeness and a greater number of readers - not only in North America but also in Ukraine."

Getting back to our website, The Ukrainian Weekly Archive was originally unveiled with 3,300 articles on April 6. On August 21 we announced that our site on the Worldwide Web, then containing 3,853 articles, had moved to its new official site at http://www.ukrweekly.com/.

The website, which now contains more than 4,000 articles, is dedicated to archival materials published in the newspaper since its founding in 1933, among them The Ukrainian Weekly's inaugural issue dated October 6, 1933, two issues devoted to the 1960 visit of Nikita Khrushchev to the U.S., the special issue published on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group (1986), and special issues dedicated to the 50th (1983) and the 60th (1993) anniversaries of The Ukrainian Weekly and the centennial of the Ukrainian National Association (1994).

Year-in-review issues of The Weekly from the years 1976-1997 (and the "Decade in Review" published at the end of 1979), as well as issues reporting on the Chornobyl accident (1986), Ukraine's declaration of sovereignty (1990), its proclamation of independence and national referendum on independence (both 1991) also are found on the archive site. The archive also contains excerpts of top stories published each week in 1998, and full texts of all issues published in 1996 and 1997. All sections of the site are searchable. The site is prepared by the newspaper's editorial and production staffs.

As already mentioned, the website was expanded on the occasion of our 65th anniversary to include a special section on the Famine - the largest collection of materials on the Internet dedicated to the Great Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine. The special section includes a chronology of the Famine years, eyewitness accounts, editorials, media reports, stories about observances of the Famine's 50th anniversary in 1983, scholarly articles, interviews with journalists who reported on the Famine, transcripts of testimony on the Famine commission bill ultimately passed by the U.S. Congress, texts of statements before the U.S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine, references and other documentation, as well as the full text of The Ukrainian Weekly's special issue on the Great Famine published on March 20, 1983.

In addition to our anniversary, another milestone this year was our first 28-page issue, published on November 8. But that pales in comparison to this issue - the largest we've ever printed at a whopping and weighty 44 pages!

Dear Readers: You may wonder at this point why we would even want to produce such a huge issue given the small size of our staff. The answer is to be found in our 65th anniversary editorial. Simply stated, the paper was born with a dual mission: "to keep Ukrainian American youth involved in the Ukrainian community and to tell the world the truth about Ukraine." That mission has been expanded through the years, but its core is the same: commitment to our communities in the United States and Canada, and to Ukraine.

As we explained to readers on the occasion of our anniversary:

"We pride ourselves on the fact that we have been faithfully serving readers for 65 years by covering news and issues of concern to our community, and serving as a forum for the exchange of ideas and as a newspaper of record. ... During the course of six and a half decades our community and its members have undergone tremendous changes, and The Weekly has grown and matured with them. It has changed to meet the needs of new generations - all the while continuing to work for the Ukrainian commonweal."

During this anniversary year we asked: "Where do we see ourselves at 65 and beyond?"

And we answered without hesitation: "Continuing as the voice of our community and as a purveyor of information about Ukraine and Ukrainians wherever they may be. As long as there's a Ukrainian community, The Ukrainian Weekly will have a raison d'être."

* * *

P.S.: As in past holiday seasons, this year, at the time of the writing of this mammoth yearend issue, we received a special delivery from Bill and Dozia Pastuszek. Our sincere thanks to them for providing sustenance to the hard-working staffers at The Weekly. Thanks also to our faithful readers and correspondents who took the time to send us Christmas greetings.

Now we would like to take some time to thank all of you, Dear Readers, for being there, for reading, for commenting on our paper.

May your Christmas season be joyous and may the New Year, 1999, bring you good fortune, good health and good news!

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