Asian Week Ceases Publication; Fires Staff

Photo by Megan Kung                                                           The growing crisis engulfing the newspaper industry is moving well beyond the major dailies to the ethnic press.

San Francisco-based Asian Week, the country’s oldest Asian-American newspaper (in English), announced that it is ceasing regular publication as of today.

Asian Week, with a circulation of around 60,000, is laying off most of its staff, said editor and publisher Ted Fang, due to falling circulation and declining ad revenue. He also said that print editions may continue to appear on special occasions, such as the Chinese New Year.

During the recent Presidential election campaign, Asian Week was an influential representative of the Asian-American press. In one notable incident, Senator Hillary Clinton quietly flew to the Bay Area to personally apologize to Chinese-American reporters who had been banned from an earlier campaign fundraiser.

Clinton’s handlers had refused the reporters access, saying that the event was not open to the “foreign press.”  At a subsequent roundtable with Asian-American journalists, Clinton stated “The Asian Pacific Islander community is important to me personally,” (and you) will always have someone to get information from” (in the Clinton campaign).