2003: THE YEAR IN REVIEW: Meanwhile, at The Weekly... (01/11/04)

2003: THE YEAR IN REVIEW

Meanwhile, at The Weekly...

Wow, 70 years! That's how long The Ukrainian Weekly has been serving the Ukrainian community. A special issue devoted to our 70th anniversary appeared on October 5, 2003. Several subsequent issues carried anniversary sections, featuring greetings from community organizations and leaders, as well as political leaders in the U.S. and Ukraine and news media outlets. At the same time we also published our quinquennial questionnaire in which we asked readers to comment on the contents of our paper. We will publish the results as soon as possible in early 2004.

During this anniversary year we brought our readers, 52 issues (as usual), 1,316 pages, 1,617 articles and 1,263,676 words (that's actually 15,024 less than last year, leading us to conclude that we used longer words that took up about the same amount of space).

The word "Ukrainian" appeared 14,089 times, "Ukrainians" 1,340 times, "Ukraine" 8,679 times and "Ukraine's" 1,848 times. "Kyiv" appeared 2,648 times, "Lviv" 589 times and "Vinnytsia" 0 times (much to the chagrin of our colleague Serge Polishchuk, who hails from Vinnytsia, and who does these word counts for us). "Kuchma" appeared 1,621 times, while "Yushchenko" appeared 596 times (such is the power of the presidency...)

As is customary, we put the full texts of all our 2002 issues online on our website (www.ukrweekly.com) in February, at the time we annually celebrate the anniversary of the founding of our publisher, the Ukrainian National Association. The site now contains 12,830 full-text articles.

If ever there was proof that our community's news media are important, it came on June 2 when United Press International carried a major news commentary about Walter Duranty's ill-gotten 1932 Pulitzer Prize and the campaign organized by Ukrainian community organizations to strip The New York Times correspondent of that prestigious award. The commentary, written by Martin Sieff, identified as senior news analyst for UPI cited our newspaper and our editorial staff member Andrew Nynka in its second paragraph and went on to cite The Ukrainian Weekly's May 25 news story several more times. And the article was read and published by other news media. We believe it was that article by Mr. Sieff, a well-respected international affairs correspondent and editor, as well as a Pulitzer Prize nominee for international reporting, that prompted other news media to pick up the story of the anti-Duranty campaign.

Soon after that, Fox News Channel interviewed The Weekly Editor-in-Chief Roma Hadzewycz and Ukrainian World Congress President Askold Lozynskyj. Brief reports about the campaign to strip Duranty of his Pulitzer ran several times, and footage from the interview aired on June 15. Asked by Fox correspondent Rick Leventhal why someone should care about a tragedy that happened 70 years ago, the editor replied: because millions of Ukrainians around the world lost millions of their family members. Ms. Hadzewycz was interviewed also by Anya Dydyk Petrenko of Voice of America on the same topic. Later in the year Ms. Dydyk interviewed the editor again, but this time about the 70th anniversary of The Weekly.

The Sieff article proved that the reach of this newspaper extends far beyond its paying subscribers. Now, in the age of the Internet, this newspaper's reach extends even farther as anyone anywhere with Internet access can find the information we carry in our newspaper.

We like to remind our readers that The Weekly was established in 1933 also to tell the world the truth about what was then taking place in Ukraine - at the very same time that the Durantys of the world were denying that a man-made famine was raging and killing millions of our people. In keeping with our mission, as of June 12, our website included a new special section titled "The campaign to revoke Duranty's 1932 Pulitzer." The section contains news stories, editorials, commentaries, columns and press reviews. Also introduced later in the year was a section devoted to Senate Resolution 202, which unequivocally called the Famine of 1932-1933 a genocide.

During 2003 The Weekly published many materials related to the Famine. We published a special section in our November 16 issue and continued publishing these sections in subsequent issues, creating quite a record of commemorations of the Famine-Genocide's anniversary, as well as reporting information on the latest scholarly research.

In September the Kyiv-based newspaper Holos Ukrainy published an article about the 70th anniversary of The Ukrainian Weekly, focusing on our newspaper as "a coeval of the Holodomor" (Famine-Genocide). Holos Ukrainy also pointed out that The Weekly has consistently focused on the Famine and on its 50th anniversary released a book titled "The Great Famine in Ukraine: The Unknown Holocaust."

As far as our staff was concerned, it was a somewhat difficult year. In June our layout artist and computer systems troubleshooter, Markian Rybak, who joined our staff in August of 2001, broke his leg. And, to make matters worse, it was a serious break. Thus, we have been without one-half of our regular production team for the past seven months.

If it wasn't for the fact that the other half of the team, our typesetter Awilda Rolon, basically did two jobs - or at least 1.75 jobs - we wouldn't have been able to put out a newspaper. Thanks go out also to our former layout artist/computer specialist, Mr. Polishchuk, who consented to come help one day a week. (Without his assistance, in fact, Ms. Rolon says there's just no way we would have been able to produce this Year in Review issue.) Thanks also go to our colleague at Svoboda, Pavlo Stokotelny, who assisted with the scanning of photos, and to the entire staff at The Weekly as everyonedid some of the work previously done by Mr. Rybak, including layout, formatting of ads, scanning of photographs, work on website materials, etc.

During the summer, as is traditional, we had summer interns. Peter Steciuk, 22, who graduated before the summer from Harvard, was here for his fourth summer. A newcomer was Roksolana Woloszyn. Why two interns, you say? Well, because much as Peter loves to work at The Weekly, he also loves Plast Ukrainian Scouting Organization. So it was off to camp for him for three weeks in July, when he was "kommandant" (director) of the camps for "yunaky" (boys age 11 and up) at the Plast camp in East Chatham, N.Y., and then again in August when he was director of the camp program at the sea scouting camp run by the Chornomortsi Fraternity of Plast. Ms. Woloszyn, meanwhile, held the fort. The 19-year-old is a sophomore majoring in English at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Fla.

We were lucky also to have help in December and part of January in the person of a veteran intern, Taisa Welhasch. Ms. Woloszyn came back, too, helping us through the difficult holiday period. Both were much appreciated also during the preparation and production of this week's mega-issue.

There was other news regarding the staff.

On March 30, 2003, our Kyiv Press Bureau correspondent Roman Woronowycz reported a story about a poor boy in Kyiv whose dream was to have his own violin. Thanks to that story, readers of The Weekly came up with funds to make the dream come true. In its June 15 issue The Weekly reported on the presentation of the violin to 14-year-old Ihor Lobok.

Andrew Nynka traveled to Ukraine in April and wrote an article from Kharkiv on the penal system and another on Kyiv's bazaars.

And, during the summer our arts editor, Ika Koznarska Casanova took off her editor's hat and put on the hat of executive director of the Music and Art Center of Greene County "Music at the Grazhda" Summer Concert Series.

A colleague of ours from Kyiv, photographer Efrem Lukatsky, many of whose photos grace these pages, recently traveled to Iraq where he ran into a Ukrainian American who grew up in our neck of the woods though he now resides in Texas, Lt. Col. Roman Bilinsky. He promptly called our man in Kyiv, Mr. Woronowycz, who wrote up a story about the encounter in Tikrit with Lt. Col. Bilinsky, who is an Army physician. What was missing, however, was a photo. We wondered: How could Efrem forget to send one? He's a photographer! Well, we've got one now, and we publish it here, for the record.

There were a number of firsts for The Weekly during 2003. Our first full-color advertisement - and a full-page ad, at that - was published in our special annual supplement called "A Ukrainian Summer" (May 4). It was a paid ad taken out by the Ukrainian American Youth Association (SUM) to promote its summer camps.

Also during 2003 we instituted a new column called "The News from Here." Readers of The Ukrainian Weekly might recall an editorial headlined "The news from here" that appeared in our March 9 issue. The reference was to a reader who called to complain that our newspaper did not carry any "news from here," but declined to say just exactly where "here" was. Her point was well-taken, however. It was clear to us that one of the things we lack is news from our local communities. Two weeks later we printed a letter from a reader titled "The Weekly needs 'news from here.' " The letter writer suggested that we establish a special section for such news compiled into something à la "Newsbriefs." In July we published our first issue of "The News from Here," as compiled by Ms. Woloszyn, one of our summer interns.

In that same July 6 issue of The Weekly, we introduced a new columnist, Khristina Lew. Ms. Lew was on staff in November 1990-January 1998 and served in our Kyiv Press Bureau. Her column, titled "Double Exposure," appears monthly and deals with issues faced by young Ukrainian Americans and their families.

We must also note that Self Reliance New Jersey Federal Credit Union was the first donor to The Ukrainian Weekly's 2003 campaign to solicit funds for the Copies for Congress project, which provides free subscriptions to the newspaper for all members of the U.S. Congress. Other major donors were: Selfreliance Ukrainian American Federal Credit Union ($1,000), the SUMA (Yonkers) Federal Credit Union ($1,000), the Ukrainian Medical Association of North American ($1,000) and First Security Federal Savings Bank ($2,500), which made the donation through its Heritage Foundation. Thanks also are due to the countless readers who have contributed to The Ukrainian Weekly Press Fund. Frankly, we couldn't do what we do without you.

We end with the big THANK YOU to all our readers, correspondents and supporters, as well as our publisher, the UNA, and our administration. May 2004 bring you all happiness, good fortune and good health.

Credits: The materials in this yearender were prepared by our staff in Parsippany, N.J., Roma Hadzewycz, Andrew Nynka and Ika Koznarska Casanova; our Kyiv Press Bureau chief, Roman Woronowycz; our colleagues Yaro Bihun and Chris Guly, who contribute, respectively, from Washington and Ottawa; as well as interns Taisa Welhasch and Roxolana Woloszyn. The materials were handled, with care and love, and laid out by the production team of Awilda Rolon and Serge Polishchuk.

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