EDITORIAL: Seventy years (10/05/03)

EDITORIAL

Seventy years

What is 70 years? Once it was considered a person's lifetime. But what is 70 years for a newspaper? How does one quantify what that means in the life of a publication like ours?

For The Ukrainian Weekly - which first rolled off the presses as a publication of the Ukrainian National Association in 1933 with the issue date of October 6 - 70 years means approximately 3,640 issues. That's give or take a few issues, as in some years there were actually 53 issues, while in others - for example when our old publishing house, Svoboda Press, used to close down for two weeks during the summer in order to allow the printers time for vacation - there may have been 50 or 51. We won't even attempt to count the number of pages issued, the number of stories reported or the number of words printed, as the sizes of our issues varied - from four pages at the paper's birth to 56 for special issues such as our year-in-review editions. (We can tell you, however, that in 2002 alone we published 1,715 articles and a total of 1,278,700 words - that's exactly 1,278,700 words.)

Seventy years means 22 editors on staff during the course of those decades (see the list below) - all of them dedicated to the cause, focused on the task at hand, willing to sacrifice and to go the extra mile to produce this unique newspaper. Of course, there were different numbers of editors at different times, ranging from one to five. And then there are the interns - the wonderful young people who have helped us out during summers, winter breaks and other times of need, as when we were short an editor for an extended period of time in late 2000/early 2001.

Seventy years means scores of regular correspondents, countless free-lancers and innumerable community activists who send in stories and information, including our youngest contributors - the members of what we call "The Next Generation" who write in to our monthly UKELODEON section for children and teens. It also means tens of thousands of subscribers and readers representing at least three generations.

Seventy years of The Ukrainian Weekly also means four books published since 1983 alone (others were published with the assistance of Weekly editors under the Svoboda Press imprint), plus a continually expanding website - an innovation introduced in 1998. Two of our books offered the best and the most significant articles published by The Weekly during the first 66 years of its existence, from 1933 through 1999 (the two volumes were issued to mark the end of the millennium). Another was dedicated to the 10th anniversary of Ukraine's independence, and the fourth, actually the first published by The Weekly, was released in 1983 to mark the 50th anniversary of the Great Famine.

Seventy years is a concept that cannot be quantified, however, when it comes to a newspaper's content and ideas. Sure, we could go back and count up the number of special issues prepared during the course of those decades, but that still wouldn't do justice to the variety and breadth of materials published in this paper. For seven decades The Ukrainian Weekly has chronicled the times, mirrored our Ukrainian society in North America and served as a leader of public opinion. Perusing the pages of our newspaper, one can readily see where our community and our nation have been, how their fates have been altered by events of worldwide significance - the rise of Hitler, Stalin's Terror and the re-establishment of Ukraine's independence among them - and how Ukrainian Americans, Ukrainian Canadians and Ukrainians in Ukraine have reacted.

Seventy years means many unquantifiable changes, some of which are symbolically reflected in the evolving face of The Ukrainian Weekly, as seen by our flag, the nameplate on a newspaper's front page (reproduced to the right of this space). Our current flag was introduced 10 years ago for The Ukrainian Weekly's 60th anniversary.

Perhaps the most important meaning of 70 years for this newspaper, however, is its resolute decision to stay the course. For seven decades The Ukrainian Weekly has remained true to a founding mission that reflects the dual realities of Ukrainian diaspora life; it strove, and strives, to maintain the Ukrainian heritage and to disseminate the truth about Ukraine and Ukrainians. As The Ukrainian Weekly turns 70 on October 6, 2003, we are sure that constant has served our readers well.

Members of The Ukrainian Weekly editorial staff

| Home Page |