2000: THE YEAR IN REVIEW: Meanwhile, at The Weekly: it's yearender time, again (01/07/01)

2000: THE YEAR IN REVIEW

Meanwhile, at The Weekly: it's yearender time, again

When last we wrote from our editorial offices here at The Ukrainian Weekly, it was 1999, the end of a millennium ... or maybe it's the year 2000 that was the end of the millennium. Millennium-schmillennium - life goes on!

Whatever the case may be, in what was just a blur, another year had passed, and it was time once again for our yearender. But there is one difference: this time, due to various production scheduling concerns, our review of the past year's events appears in the first issue of the new year, instead of the last issue of the old.

As has become traditional, we conclude our "Year in Review" with a look at the goings-on here at The Weekly.

Milestones in Y2K

The Ukrainian Weekly celebrated its 67th birthday in 2000. Our editorial on the occasion noted that the paper was born with the mission of keeping Ukrainian Americans involved in the Ukrainian community and telling the world the truth about Ukraine. "Today The Weekly continues as the voice of our community and as a purveyor of information about Ukraine and Ukrainians wherever they may be. That it continues to function as intended by its founders is due to the colossal support of our publisher, the Ukrainian National Association, as well as our devoted readers." We concluded by assuring our readers that "The editorial, production and administrative staffs here at The Ukrainian Weekly remain as strongly committed as ever to the founding principles of this newspaper. With the support of our readers and our community at large we will see to it that this commitment is fulfilled."
Our first volume of "The Ukrainian Weekly 2000" - a compilation of the most significant news stories and commentaries published by The Ukrainian Weekly during the newspaper's 66-plus years of existence - turned out to be a financial success as book sales brought in approximately $24,300 and press fund donations added $32,200, for a total of nearly $56,500. Volume 1 covers events between 1933, when The Weekly was founded, through the 1960s. Volume II, to be released in 2001, covers the 1970s through the 1990s.
UKELODEON, our section "for the next generation," the inaugural issue of which was published on Valentine's Day 1999, celebrated its first anniversary this year and is still going strong. We're always looking for more submissions from the younger generations. Consider this an open invitation.
The Weekly marked its fifth anniversary in cyberspace in July, and its second on its own official website, www.ukrweekly.com. The Ukrainian Weekly Archives site now contains 8,569 full-text articles, not counting the 285 excerpted articles for the year 2000. Full texts for that year will become available soon.
The Weekly's website registered 100,000 hits as of early December. The site now gets about 2,500 hits per day.
Awilda Rolon, a member of our production staff (we call her a typesetter, but in reality she is much more than that ...), marked a "significant" birthday in May, so we, her colleagues, decided to host a surprise celebration. Then, on December 15, she celebrated her 20th anniversary with The Ukrainian Weekly. It was an occasion for thanks and kudos, and for that all-purpose Ukrainian song "Mnohaya Lita" (one of Awilda's favorites).
Roma Hadzewycz marked her 20th anniversary as editor-in-chief of The Weekly in May. Later in the year she was elected to the Ukrainian National Association's General Assembly during its annual meeting in December. An advisor in 1990-1998, Roma was voted to fill the vacancy on the General Assembly that had existed since the death in 1999 of Advisor Walter Korchynsky.
Perhaps the most significant of our milestones in terms of personnel was the departure of Editor Irene Jarosewich, who was tapped to be editor-in-chief down the hall at the Svoboda Ukrainian-language weekly. "Weekly's loss is Svoboda's gain: Jarosewich named editor-in-chief of Svoboda," announced the headline in our November 19 issue. Irene, who had been with The Weekly for just short of four years, took over as editor-in-chief at Svoboda on November 9; she was introduced to the newspaper's readers in the November 17 issue. Irene's colleagues at The Weekly congratulated her at a staff gathering, raising a toast to her success at Svoboda.
Editor Roman Woronowycz of the Kyiv Press Bureau and our layout artist/computer troubleshooter, Serge "Sid" Polishchuk, both marked eight years with The Weekly. Roman spent approximately half that time at our editorial offices in Jersey City and the other half in Ukraine's capital. Serge has been with us at both our Jersey City and Parsippany headquarters.
The anniversary count is a little more difficult to figure out for Ika Koznarska Casanova, our arts editor plus. She joined the staff full-time in 1980 and worked into 1981, but then returned part-time in 1990. So, do we celebrate a 10th anniversary of Ika's current term, or the 20th anniversary of her first signing on?

Innovations

Our first "Wedding Announcements" section was published in March. Two others followed in August and December. We hope to publish more such sections in 2001. It's a great way to have our community share in the joy of such meaningful occasions.
Likewise, our "Congratulations, Graduates!" section appeared for the first time this year, in July, just after graduation season. We plan to continue this special section in 2001.
In April we announced that Sputnik Global Telecommunications Corp., an Illinois corporation, had designed a telecommunications fund-raiser to benefit The Ukrainian Weekly Press Fund. George Stromeckyj, president of Sputnik Global Telecom and a lifelong member of Ukrainian National Association Branch 399 in Chicago, called the plan "Dial All Day for the UNA." A portion of the commissions earned by the company are donated to The Ukrainian Weekly Press Fund; those commissions are directly proportional to the total volume of usage by those who sign up for the plan.
The newsstand price of The Ukrainian Weekly, as well as Svoboda, was rolled back as of April 1 from $1.25 to $1 per copy. The newsstand price in Ukraine remains $2.

In other news...

"A Ukrainian Summer" - our fourth annual supplement of seasonal articles on where to go, what to do - was published on May 7. Offerings ranged from the old mainstays of summer camps, courses and festivals to a self-guided tour of Lamont County in Alberta, "the church capital of North America," as well as sites and doings in Ukraine.
In August/September of this year, The Ukrainian Weekly sent letters to 22 credit unions in the United States - the Ukrainian community's strongest financial institutions - in an effort to solicit financial support for the cost of complimentary subscriptions sent by this newspaper to all members of the U.S. Congress. The goal was to offset this program's annual cost of approximately $27,000 which is currently funded by The Weekly but serves the interests of the entire Ukrainian community.

The first to respond, with a $1,000 donation, was the newspaper's neighbor, Selfreliance (UA) Federal Credit Union, whose main office is in Newark, N.J., but which has a branch here in Parsippany in the UNA Corporate Headquarters Building. Three other credit unions followed suit: Self Reliance (NY) Federal Credit Union, New York, $5,000; Rochester Ukrainian Federal Credit Union, Rochester, N.Y., $1,000; and the Ukrainian Orthodox Federal Credit Union, New York, $250. The total raised thus far for the Copies for Congress Project is $7,250.
UNA President Ulana Diachuk in September penned an article titled "Will you become an ambassador of The Weekly?" in which she encouraged our readers "to assist us in our efforts to increase The Weekly's circulation."

She continued: "Who else has been so supportive of this paper over the decades? You have been looking forward to each issue because you appreciate its reports of the news from Ukraine by The Weekly's own correspondent; or you like to read the letters to the editor and commentaries on a variety of topics of concern to the Ukrainian American and Canadian communities; or you use the paper as a source of information about upcoming events in the Ukrainian community ... If each subscriber could encourage only one person from the circle of his/her relatives or friends, acquaintances or colleagues to become a new subscriber, our circulation base would be much strengthened ... The Ukrainian Weekly has already served three generations. Please be assured that its publisher, the Ukrainian National Association, and its editors are looking forward to serving you, the readers, for many years into the future."
The annual meeting of the General Assembly of the Ukrainian National Association, our publisher, unanimously decided to institute an across-the-board increase of $5 per year for subscriptions to both The Weekly and Svoboda that will take effect in April 2001. Thus, the price of a yearly subscription to either newspaper will be $45 for members and $55 for non-members.
In the year 2000 we published 1,364 pages of our newspaper; in comparison, in 1999 we printed 1,148.

A note of thanks

It is only fitting that at the end of the year we thank all those who made our work possible:

our regular correspondents, Yaro Bihun, our Washington correspondent, and Michael Sawkiw Jr. of the Ukrainian National Information Service, Oksana Zakydalsky in Toronto and Chris Guly in Ottawa;
our occasional contributors in North America and beyond, including Frank Sysyn, Roman Serbyn and Jars Balan in Canada; Tamara Stadnychenko, Natalka Gawdiak, Bohdanna Wolanska, Olena Stercho, Olena Welhasch and photographer/writer Andrij Wowk in the United States; and Marta Kolomayets, Stefan Korshak, Pavel Polityuk, Danylo Kulyniak and Yana Sedova in Kyiv; as well as Peter Shmigel, who is based in Australia and covered the Sydney Olympics exclusively for our readers;
our analysts, David Marples, Roman Solchanyk and Taras Kuzio, plus the staffers and correspondents of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, whose reports we gladly utilize;
our regular columnists, Dr. Myron B. Kuropas ("Faces and Places"), Andrew Fedynsky ("Perspectives"), Helen Smindak ("Dateline New York"), Orysia Paszczak Tracz ("The Things We Do"), Dr. Ingert Kuzych ("Focus on Philately"), Ihor Stelmach ("Ukrainian Pro Hockey Update") and Roman Sawycky ("Sounds and Views");
the editor of our UKELODEON section, Lydia Smyk.
our administration, headed by Walter Honcharyk; as well as with our advertising manager, Maria Oscislawski; our subscriptions/circulation manager, Mary Pendzola; and Roman Pawlyshyn, administrative clerk;
our secretary in Kyiv, Ira Zhelezniak;
our colleague at the Associated Press, Efrem Lukatsky; and
many, many more community activists who have kept us and our readers informed, as well as our numerous benefactors and advertisers, whose support is essential from the financial perspective.

A special "thank you" goes also to our young editorial assistants: Myroslaw Bytz, Peter Steciuk, Taisa Welhasch and Stepan Vitvitsky, all college students who have helped out at The Weekly at various times during the year 2000, and Deanna Yurchuk, a senior majoring in journalism/English at Rutgers University, who has been a steady part-timer since late November.

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In closing this section, and the "2000: The Year in Review," we wish all of you, Dear Readers, good fortune, success, happiness, health and the fulfillment of your dreams in 2001 and beyond.

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