2005: THE YEAR IN REVIEW: Meanwhile, here at The Ukrainian Weekly (01/15/06)

2005: THE YEAR IN REVIEW

Meanwhile, here at The Ukrainian Weekly

Slava Ukraini! That was the message on the orange banner on the front page of our first issue of the year. We'd used spot color on the front page of several issues published at the time of the Orange Revolution to highlight our support of democracy, justice and fairness in Ukraine. Once the results of the presidential election were announced in January, we carried an orange banner reading, in Ukrainian, "Glory to Ukraine!"

The year 2005 was notable for this newspaper's coverage of the new administration of President Viktor Yushchenko, beginning with his inauguration and appointment of ministers and other top administration officials. Our Kyiv Press Bureau provided information about the new officials' backgrounds and professed goals. (But then you can read all about that in the first section of this Year in Review issue ...)

The Weekly provided complete coverage of Mr. Yushchenko's historic visit in April to Washington, where he addressed a joint meeting of both houses of the U.S. Congress, as well as to Chicago, where he met with prominent business and political leaders, and Boston, where he received the Profile in Courage Award. On the eve of the presidential visit, The Weekly's former staffer Marta Kolomayets filed an exclusive interview with First Lady Kateryna Chumachenko Yushchenko. Later we covered the president's trip to Philadelphia, where he received the Philadelphia Liberty Medal.

How we managed to cover all the developments in Ukraine is a story in and of itself.

When Roman Woronowycz left our staff in early December 2004, Andrew Nynka volunteered to serve at the Kyiv Press Bureau in the interim (through mid-January), while we searched for a full-time replacement. (We, and our readers, owe Mr. Nynka a great debt of gratitude.) We were extremely lucky to hire Zenon Zawada, an experienced journalist, to work out of our Kyiv Press Bureau. He took up his assignment on February 16 and hit the ground running. After all, this was just three weeks after the inauguration of President Yushchenko and there was so much happening in Ukraine. Mr. Zawada had previously written several free-lance articles for The Weekly in 1998 and 2002. Prior to that he had interned at The Weekly's Kyiv Press Bureau in September though December 1997, while he spent a semester studying at Taras Shevchenko University.

On June 23, after realizing some savings on expenses at our Kyiv office, we were able to hire not merely a replacement for our loyal and hard-working secretary Tatiana Matviichuk, but an editorial assistant, Yana Sedova, who functions as the office staff and has contributed quite a number of news stories to our paper. Ms. Sedova left her position as a journalism instructor at Kyiv International University to join the Kyiv Press Bureau. She has been an invaluable addition.

Speaking of the Kyiv Press Bureau, it is important to note that the entire staff of The Weekly believes the bureau is essential to our newspaper because we are able to report the news that the mainstream media ignores and to provide the details that they either do not understand or are not interested in.

Other members of The Weekly's editorial staff are: Eidtor-in-Chief Roma Hadzewycz (who this year was honored by the Carpathian Ski Club, or KLK, for her years of community service, including 25 as editor-in-chief) and Editor Ika Koznarska Casanova, who is also our de facto arts editor. The production staff members are Larissa Oprysko, design artist, and Awilda Rolon (who marked 25 years with The Weekly in December), our typesetter and layout person. Our student intern for the summer, was Roxolana Woloszyn, a veteran intern who had worked with us also during the summers of 2003 and 2004. Also helping out during part of the summer was Danylo Peleschuk, a sophomore at Northeastern University in Boston.

Our veteran Washington correspondent Yaro Bihun continued to provide essential news from the U.S. capital, plus unique feature articles. Oksana Zakydalsky did likewise from Toronto. And then there were other free-lancers who contributed occasional articles or community activists who kept us in touch with their communities. Our thanks go out to them all.

During 2005 The Weekly published a number of special issues or sections: "Year in Review: 2004" appeared in our January 16 issue, weighing in at 48 pages; the "Ukrainian Debutante Balls" section appeared on March 13; and the annual pullout titled "A Ukrainian Summer" was part of our May 1 edition.

In addition, there were several noteworthy series, among them: "Messages from the Orange Revolution," a compilation of daily e-mail messages by Petro Rondiak, an American living in Kyiv who chronicled the events of the revolution as they happened over an 18-day period. The series appeared in the first three issues of 2005.

In addition, there was the series "Reflections of election observers," in which volunteers who traveled to Ukraine to observe the presidential election shared their experiences and commentaries. These appeared in the fourth, fifth and sixth issues of the year.

The Weekly also introduced two new columns: February marked the debut of Taras Szmagala Jr., whose column is titled "View from the Trembita Lounge" (yes, that's a reference to Soyuzivka's bar); and Mr. Zawada soon afterwards began writing his occasional column from Kyiv called "Reporter's Notebook."

There was some controversy on the pages of The Weekly during 2005, engendered by commentaries and analyses submitted by writers within our community.

On August 7 we published an article written jointly by Dr. Taras Kuzio, visiting professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University, and Orest Deychakiwsky, senior staff advisor at the U.S. Helsinki Commission, titled "A guide to who's who in D.C.'s Ukraine-related activities." Of course, there were reactions to who was, or wasn't, cited in the article, and to the criticisms expressed regarding our community's level of involvement and visibility in Washington.

The main point of their article: "The U.S. leads the Western world in both the degree of outreach to experts and in its high level of interest in Ukraine. Much of this activity is not publicly reported and, therefore, Ukrainian Americans, and Ukrainians, do not know of it. ... Washington is strategically the most important Western city for Ukraine and for its aspirations to join the WTO and NATO and, to a lesser extent, the EU. It is, therefore, imperative that Ukrainian Americans, while recognizing that many other institutions and individuals are involved with Ukraine compared with the pre-independence period, re-assess the strategic importance of providing sufficient resources and personnel to have a meaningful, sustained presence in Washington, which includes having influential and committed people on the ground."

Another controversial article appeared earlier, on April 24, under the heading "Reflections on President Viktor Yushchenko's visit to the U.S." The article by Peter T. Woloschuk was titled "The good, the bad and the ugly: a look at the visit to Boston." While hailing the visit to Boston as a huge success, Mr. Woloschuk suggested that, "With the event still in our memory, it is appropriate to examine and learn from what worked and what didn't, and then to constructively go forward." Mr. Woloschuk, who teaches communication and journalism at Boston College and Northeastern University, proceeded to outline, not only the "good," but also a series of shortcomings, mistakes and miscues - much to the dismay of some in the Boston community and beyond.

Other views of President Yushchenko's visits to the United States were penned by a university student, Christina Paschyn, who wrote "A journalism student's view of the big event in Chicago," and a high school student, Andrij Zwarych, whose October 2 story was headlined "Ukrainian American youths and community of Philadelphia welcome Yushchenko."

Speaking of students, another notable event in this history of The Weekly came on February 28 when Mr. Nynka presented Pope John High School in Sparta, N.J., with a picture of the historic events that unfolded in Ukraine as he covered the Orange Revolution for The Ukrainian Weekly. Mr. Nynka wrote about the day - during which all of the nearly 900 students of the private Catholic high school, gathered in smaller groups, had an opportunity to hear a 40-minute presentation about the historic events of 2004 - in his article titled "A Catholic high school in New Jersey learns about the Orange Revolution."

The event was the brainchild of Elizabeth Buniak, a Ukrainian American computer science teacher at the high school, who was assisted by the school principal, fellow teachers, librarians and members of the Ukrainian American community.

Our website, called The Ukrainian Weekly Archive, now includes 16,424 full-text articles, which includes the full texts of articles published from 1996 through 2003, and articles from various other special issues, as well as an extraordinary section about the Famine-Genocide of 1932-1933 - one of the best available on the World Wide Web. The latest addition - the 1,918 articles published during 2004 - was unveiled, as has become tradition, in February on the anniversary of the founding of the Ukrainian National Association, our publisher. Our website, www.ukrweekly.com, is updated each week with excerpts from The Weekly's top news stories.

Currently in the works is a new website, with exciting new features. Also planned are online subscriptions to The Ukrainian Weekly, which is very important as we try to attract younger generations of readers who have become used to getting their news via the Internet.

The online edition of The Ukrainian Weekly is one of the topics discussed this year with Honorary Member of the UNA General Assembly Taras Szmagala Sr., who chairs the assembly's Publications Committee. Mr. Szmagala traveled to the Home Office on August 5 to meet with the editors-in-chief of Svoboda and The Ukrainian Weekly in order to discuss the well-being of the Ukrainian National Association's publications. Mr. Szmagala and members of the Publications Committee also had a brief meeting with the two editors-in-chief during the General Assembly's annual meeting in September; more such meetings and consultations are expected in 2006.

The year 2005 marked the 72nd anniversary of the founding of The Ukrainian Weekly. In an editorial written on the occasion we noted: "We can't help but be proud of our paper's illustrious history, which was made possible by visionaries who brought this newspaper into existence, including activists of the Ukrainian National Association and Editor-in-Chief Luke Myshuha of Svoboda, our sister publication. The Weekly's anniversary is a fitting time to pay tribute to these leaders who understood that an English-language newspaper could accomplish two very important tasks: reach beyond the Ukrainian community to tell the truth about Ukraine and its people, and keep a new generation of Ukrainians who no longer were fluent in the Ukrainian language involved in Ukrainian affairs."

It is fitting also to give thanks to our supporters, the countless people who make donations to The Ukrainian Weekly Press Fund. During 2005 their contributions totaled $27,660.76.

To conclude this year's edition of the "Year in Review," allow us to cite the traditional year-end statistics. The 52 issues of 2005 brought you 1,444 pages, filled with 1,490,595 words. And, speaking of words, "Ukrainian" appeared 13,129 times, while "Ukraine" appeared 13,330 times and "Ukrainians" 1,470 times.

With that, we sign off, wishing you all the best in 2006 and beyond.

Credits

The 2005 edition of our "Year in Review" was written by the staff of The Ukrainian Weekly: Roma Hadzewycz, Andrew Nynka, Zenon Zawada and Ika Koznarska Casanova. Also assisting were: Yaro Bihun, Oksana Zakydalsky, Deanna Yurchuk and our intern, Danylo Peleschuk.

The material is based on stories published during 2005 in The Weekly, including our regular news sources, such as Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Eurasia Daily Monitor, Religious Information Service of Ukraine and Ukrinform.

Of necessity, the "2005: The Year in Review" cannot include every single story published during the year; selections were made based on the editors' discretion.

| Home Page |