EDITORIAL: Our 69th anniversary (10/06/02)

EDITORIAL

Our 69th anniversary

Today, October 6, 2002, The Ukrainian Weekly marks the 69th anniversary of its founding. It was on October 6, 1933, that the first issue of this newspaper rolled off the presses at the Svoboda Press print shop in Jersey City, N.J.

In its first year the neophyte newspaper reported on the Great Famine of 1932-1933, created by the Soviet regime to crush the people of Ukraine and ethnographically Ukrainian areas. It wrote also of the dearth of young leaders in the Ukrainian American community, the need to perpetuate the Ukrainian heritage and the role of our younger generations in giving voice to the aspirations of the subjugated Ukrainian nation. Its founding mission was at once simple and difficult: to keep Ukrainian American youth involved in the Ukrainian community and to tell the world the truth about Ukraine. Simple to declare; difficult to implement.

Through the decades, The Weekly has endeavored to stay true to that original mission, while expanding its reach. Today our newspaper strives to keep Ukrainians of all ages involved and engaged in our community life, and to serve as a network for the increasingly more dispersed members of our community. Simultaneously, it attempts to inform the world about Ukraine and Ukrainians, as well as to provide Ukrainians in the diaspora with a true picture of developments in Ukraine.

A key role in The Ukrainian Weekly's expanding mission in recent years was played by the 32nd UNA Convention in 1990, which adopted a resolution calling for the opening of a Kyiv Press Bureau. As a result, The Weekly was on the ground in Ukraine when independence was proclaimed. More than 10 years later that bureau continues to provide unparalleled coverage of historic developments in Ukraine.

Since 1998 The Ukrainian Weekly Archive has been available to the general public via the World Wide Web. Maintained and continuously updated as a community service by Weekly staffers, the site was inaugurated on August 20, 1998; it now contains 11,115 full-text articles, including archival materials published in the newspaper since its founding in 1933. Also found at www.ukrweekly.com is the largest collection of materials on the Internet dedicated to the Great Famine, the full texts of all issues published in 1996-2001, as well as excerpts of the top news stories published each week during the current year. As well, there is an index of stories published in the years 1933-1948, 1977, 1979-2001, and year-in-review issues for each year since 1976, when The Weekly inaugurated that special annual section.

In 2000 and 2001 the two-volume compilation "The Ukrainian Weekly 2000" provided a sampling of the major events covered by The Weekly since its founding through the end of the century by reprinting the most significant articles from the period. Most recently, we released "Ukraine Lives!" - a special book dedicated to the first decade of Ukraine's newly re-established independence. Our hope is that "Ukraine Lives!" will serve as both a historical record of Ukraine's rebirth and a keepsake.

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As we reflect on our 69th anniversary, we must underscore that The Weekly is fortunate to have an extremely loyal readership. (We could certainly use your help, dear readers, in attracting new subscribers, which would help make this paper more viable, financially speaking.) However, subscriptions, do not even come close to supporting the work of this newspaper. To be sure, our advertisers and our benefactors do help foot the bill, but, frankly, without the financial input of our publisher, the Ukrainian National Association, neither The Weekly nor the Ukrainian-language Svoboda would exist. Both weekly newspapers are funded with hefty subsidies from the UNA - probably the best concrete example of the UNA's role as a fraternal benefit society that exists to benefit its members and their community.

As The Weekly enters its 70th year, we pledge - with the continued support of the UNA, community organizations and institutions, and individual readers - to continue our work and our mission. May our joint efforts ensure that The Ukrainian Weekly remains a resource for years, and decades, to come.

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