Nichi Bei Weekly
(The Renaissance Journalism Center has provided a $20,000 Media Greenhouse mini-grant to the Nichi Bei Foundation for its dramatic effort to breathe new life to a Japanese American newspaper with a 110-year-old legacy by converting to nonprofit status and ramping up its online presence.)
By Jaena Rae Cabrera
When the pioneering Nichi Bei Times newspaper closed last year, concerned staff members, contributors and community leaders banded together to save it.
Rather than allow fiscal problems to shut down the publication, which has a 110-year-old legacy, they formed a nonprofit organization to continue it as the Nichi Bei Weekly, and then laid plans to revamp their online presence with a new website.
"With the closure of both the Nichi Bei Times and the Hokubei Mainichi Japanese American newspapers last year, this really makes our success crucial," said Kenji G. Taguma, the former editor and vice president of the Nichi Bei Times who is now the editor-in-chief of the Nichi Bei Weekly and president of the newly formed Nichi Bei Foundation. "It is a model for whether a for-profit can rise up as a nonprofit. I totally see this as a movement. We've received many donations from subscribers who have validated our efforts because they are telling us and showing us they want to see the paper continue."
They acted quickly. The first issue of Nichi Bei Weekly was published Sept. 17, 2009, immediately following the last edition of the Nichi Bei Times. Central to the foundation and the new publication is the notion of keeping the Japanese American community "connected, informed, and empowered."
"We set out to engage the community like never before. We created a totally separate nonprofit charitable and educational organization with the main thrust being to establish the newspaper," Taguma said. "This was important because at a time when community organizations were impacted by budget cuts, I felt that the community needed us now more than ever, in terms of helping them raise funds and awareness of their issues. We needed to keep a form of media alive."
Shifting to a nonprofit model was the first step, and the next involves launching a new website that will cater to a larger, and younger, pan-Asian American audience.
Taguma recognizes that there is another facet to the Asian American community: the younger generations. In order to keep the entire community "connected, informed and empowered," the Nichi Bei Foundation has developed an online project: evolving a basic news site into an "Asian American Huffington Post."
"The website will be decidedly pan-Asian. At its base, a lot of our news is JA community oriented, but we've done a lot of Asian American stuff as well," Taguma said. "Our online news content will be partly that. Similar to the Huffington Post model, we will have guest bloggers from across the country, perhaps internationally, and we hope to do a lot of cross-promotional marketing on sites like angryasianman.com."
"The name of the website may change. I think the name of the paper will remain to carry on the legacy," Taguma said. "I see this as a third chapter in the Nichi Bei legacy. It began in 1899 with the Nichi Bei Shimbun, evolved into the Nichi Bei Times after World War II, and now we have the Nichi Bei Weekly and its new community website."
The goal is to develop the website into a community news hub with a greater scope in terms of geography and ethnic diversity. It will be a forum for English-speaking individuals from the Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese, Pacific Islander and south Indian communities.
In addition to the new blog format, the Nichi Bei Weekly website will invite the community to have a greater say in the news content through new technology such as spot.us, a pay-as-you-go format.
"With spot.us we would post a story pitch and a small description of the story. For example, we might want to do a story on the effects of the multi-racial census a few years ago and we want to find out how that data is being utilized. You'd put who will write it, and how much it might cost to do the story," Taguma said.
"If people like the idea and they want to see the story, people may donate whatever amount of money to help fund it. That's what the traditional spot.us is right now," he said. "However, I also want to utilize that to see what our readership wants to read as well. If you want to see more entertainment stories or sports stories, or investigative stories, donate to this or that fund. It will allow people to choose what they will fund and give them a direct way of telling us what they want."
Similar technology could also help the Foundation fundraise for fellowships and scholarships for the community.
The Nichi Bei Weekly will build, market, and maintain the website with the help of the grant from the Renaissance Journalism Center's Media Greenhouse.