In the Land of Free

By James Kelly

Leave it to Benjamin Franklin, that protean spinner of projects, to publish the first foreign-language newspaper in America. The year was 1732; the paper, called the Philadelphia Zeitung, was aimed at the city's burgeoning German population. As the decades rolled by, the growth and variety of the immigrant press mirrored the flow of the immigrants themselves. By the early 1900s, when the boatloads of newcomers reached their peak, some 1,300 foreign- language newspapers and magazines were being published in the U.S. New York City alone boasted a cacophony of 32 dailies, including ten in German, five in Yiddish, two in Bohemian and one each in Croatian, Slovakian and Slovenian.

Today there are an estimated 300 periodicals serving immigrant readers. Yet that figure offers only a partial picture, since scores of papers are mom- and-pop operations that elude surveys. Many of the papers catering to Europeans have withered away, while the influx of Hispanics and Asians has ( given rise to dozens of new publications. The U.S. has six Spanish-language dailies, with a combined circulation of 325,000. There is a newspaper war of sorts in New York City, home to both the venerable El Diario/La Prensa (circ. 70,000) and the upstart Noticias del Mundo (circ. 57,000), owned by the publishing arm of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church. In Los Angeles, La Opinion (60,000) competes against Noticias' West Coast edition (30,000). The Midwest is served by Chicago's El Manana Daily (45,000). Miami's Diario Las Americas, founded in 1953, finds its biggest challenger in the Miami Herald, which publishes a daily Spanish-language supplement called El Herald. Begun in 1976, El Herald is inserted into editions delivered to Hispanic neighborhoods. Though Diario (circ. 63,000) is not as rabidly anti- Castro as many of the broadsheets that circulate among Dade County's 666,000 Cuban Americans, the paper is sturdily anti-Communist.

Immigrant journalism is often colored by homeland politics. San Francisco's eight Chinese-language papers tend to side with either Taiwan or the People's Republic. The Haiti Observateur, a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based weekly with a circulation of 45,000, was founded in 1971 as a challenge to Francois ("Papa Doc") Duvalier, the country's self-appointed President for Life. All but one of California's 24 Vietnamese papers excoriate Hanoi, while the Philippine News, with 73,000 readers, opposes Ferdinand Marcos.

No matter what the language, most papers offer a similar menu of reports from the mother country, national news with an ethnic angle, local cultural calendars and profiles about immigrants, including sports heroes, who made the American dream come true. "One thing we are is pro-Hispanic," says Ezequiel Montes, general manager of El Heraldo, a scrappy Chicago weekly. "Anything good from our community, we go after."

Though a few papers turn profits, most barely squeeze by. Many publications are based in cramped storefronts or lofts, run by a few workers who do everything from report stories to deliver copies. The bigger Hispanic papers have begun to attract national advertisers, but most rely on local merchants for ad revenue. What all the papers have in common is a doughty resolve to keep the presses running. Alejandro Esclamado, editor of the Philippine News, continues publishing despite financial losses he blames on advertisers that were allegedly bullied into canceling ads by the Marcos government. "You reach a point when you make a decision that you are going to dedicate your life to a cause," says Esclamado, who began the paper in his San Francisco garage in 1961. "This community still needs this newspaper."

Here are three papers, all relative newcomers themselves, that reflect the diversity of today's immigrant press:

-- Before Do Ngoc Yen fled Viet Nam in 1975, he worked for a newspaper that was once shut down in anger by South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu. But even those troubles did not prepare Do for the difficulties of starting Nguoi Viet, one of California's oldest and most respected Vietnamese-language papers. Armed with $4,000 and a borrowed IBM Selectric typewriter, Do put together his first issue in a friend's San Diego office in 1978.

Today Nguoi Viet (which means Vietnamese people) has its headquarters in a shopping mall in Westminster, Calif. The paper's eight full-time employees (top salary: $800 a month) publish four issues a week, including a special edition for Los Angeles. Do distributes his 8,000 copies free, but he sells enough ads, mostly to local Vietnamese merchants, to turn a modest profit. As Nguoi Viet has grown, however, so has the field. Do must compete with 14 other Vietnamese papers and magazines serving Orange County's 90,000 Vietnamese.

As the paper's only full-time journalist, Do writes and translates as many as ten stories an issue. Though Nguoi Viet specializes in local news, the tabloid also covers the large Vietnamese communities in Texas and Washington, D.C., and events in Viet Nam. Since most of its subscribers cannot read English, Nguoi Viet carries a healthy dose of national and international news. Do relies on a network of part-time reporters across the country and his biggest problem is finding journalists without an ideological bias. "My readers need to know both sides," says Do, who reserves his bitter antipathy toward Hanoi for the short editorial notes that sometimes accompany stories. Do's dream is to make Nguoi Viet into a national daily, but the paper's financial health is still too fragile. Admits Do: "I survive by week or by month."

-- "When we came to the United States, we didn't have a paper like this," says Olga Ordonez, who fled Cuba in 1962. "One would certainly have helped us adjust to the culture here." As owner of the weekly La Voz de Houston, Ordonez is now helping her fellow Hispanics adjust to life in Texas. Only five years old, La Voz has a circulation of about 40,000, thus edging out El Sol, the city's other major Hispanic weekly (circ. 37,000). Though La Voz owes much of its success to its exhaustive rundown of cultural and social activities, Ordonez is proudest of the paper's international coverage (La Voz receives news from abroad via UPI satellite). She keeps an especially sharp eye out for foreign news in the paper's own backyard. When a Catholic bishop from Nicaragua delivered a speech in Houston last summer, La Voz published the lengthy text. Neither of the city's two English-language dailies covered the event in such detail.

The paper derives much of its lively quality from Editor Maria Melero, who is only 23. A graduate of New York University and, like Ordonez, a Cuban immigrant, Melero favors features that help immigrants adjust to Houston. She assigned a reporter from the eleven-member staff to write a series on the different sections of the city's barrio. The paper's municipal coverage concentrates on explaining how local government works. Melero regularly runs requests from readers seeking the whereabouts of friends. For Ordonez, La Voz should educate as well as inform. "I'm most proud of being a means of communication, especially among those who do not know the language," she says. "A paper is a means of union. We seek always to unify our readers and to help them improve."

-- As the flow of Korean immigrants rose during the 1960s, Andrew and Peter Ohm heard the knock of opportunity. The two brothers answered it in 1967 by starting Korea Times, now a prosperous daily (circ. 13,000) based in Queens, N.Y. Of the six foreign-language papers serving New York's 150,000 Koreans, Korea Times is the oldest and largest.

The paper is divided into two sections, one with stories from Korea, whose pages are made up in Seoul and flown to the U.S., and the other consisting of local stories written by the staff's 14 reporters. Besides offering advice on immigration and taxes, Korea Times reports on the costs of fruits and vegetables, information that is of great interest to the estimated 1,000 Korean-run produce stands in New York City. "If a wholesale price has changed, we put it in the paper," says Auy Kuan Park, Korea Times' associate editor.

The Ohm brothers (Peter came to the U.S. from Seoul in 1955, Andrew ten years later) face a dilemma common to owners of immigrant papers. Their mission is to help newcomers blend into American society, but they also have a pragmatic stake in preserving the group's language and traditions. Korea Times meets this challenge by sponsoring an unusually wide range of activities, including a Miss Korea-New York contest and an annual parade down Broadway. "We like to teach Koreans how to survive in this country," says Andrew Ohm. At the same time, he adds, "whatever we gain from the Korean community, we like to give it back."

With reporting by Joseph N. Boyce/New York and Charles Pelton/ Los Angeles