nwasianweekly.com
June 23, 2007

Illustration by Ann-Marie Stillion



Publisher’s regrets over the past 25 years

By Assunta Ng
Northwest Asian Weekly

Editor’s note: This is part nine in a continuing series by the publisher of the Northwest Asian Weekly and Seattle Chinese Post. The newspapers are celebrating their 25th anniversary this year.

Printing the wrong photo of a murder suspect was my first nightmare as a newspaper publisher.

What would you do if you were in my shoes?

As I reflect on the past 25 years, I realize that every crisis I’ve faced is part of a priceless education that no diploma could match. No degree could encompass all the knowledge I have gained as a publisher. None of my journalism courses prepared me to deal with a situation as tough as this one.

It was 1983 when the Wah Mee massacre, the worst mass killing in Seattle history, struck the community. The Seattle Chinese Post was barely a year old, still struggling to survive. I was inexperienced about smelling trouble ahead, seeking advice from fellow publishers and spending money to consult with attorneys. Luckily, we didn’t use that photo in our second publication, the Northwest Asian Weekly, which was called the Seattle Chinese Post - English Edition at the time.

We ended up paying for a mistake we couldn’t afford to make, just to get the first scoop. I learned my lesson about taking bad risks.

Despite our repeated efforts to do so, we couldn’t confirm the photo before press time. When the truth was revealed, I was overwhelmed, first with horror and regret, then misery and distress. Give me a hole at that moment and I would have crawled inside and prayed to never be found!

Could it be God’s will that I had to go through what I did so that I could become the publisher I am today? Don’t get me wrong — I was not concerned about taking a financial hit. What I regret was the ordeal that I put my employees and family through.

A typical solution for a newspaper is to print a correction or retraction in the next issue. But a week later would have been too long for us to bear the stacks of garbage containing that photo on the front page! And what if some readers don’t read the issue with the correction in it? Or even if they did read the issue, would they miss it? What would be the consequence for the young man we incorrectly identified as the murder suspect? Without a doubt, he would have hated us forever. How would this mistake — this inexcusable error — affect our reputation? As I vowed not to take on any of those burdens, one option became obvious.

While my staff, including my husband, turned to me for direction, I responded, “Recall and reprint the whole issue.”

Those words astounded my people. “Is she insane?” they thought. Despite their skepticism, there was no time to challenge my will. If I had partners or an advisory board at the time, would we have made the same decision? It was one of those defining moments in my career. Even when I was panicked, I was decisive and forging ahead.

Making the decision turned out to be the easy part. The implementation was tough. Several copies were already out on the streets. A group of loyal readers (some have since passed away) drops by our office every Thursday morning to buy the first copies off the press, and that day was no different.

“Chase down every single copy,” I instructed.

All of my people rushed out of the office and ran after readers who had just bought papers from our office inside Chinatown’s Bush Hotel.

Only one out of six readers refused to return the paper. He could sense we were trying to hide something. My editor was relentless. Finally, the reader gave in.

Luckily, the papers had not yet been distributed to the newsstands. Otherwise, for the rest of our lives, there would have been evidence to prove our guilt.

When the young man who we mistakenly named as the suspect learned about our fiasco, he thought it was “funny.” Had we distributed the issue that contained him as the murder suspect, would he and his family think the same?

Here is my biggest regret. At the end of the day, after the right version of the paper was printed, mailed and distributed, few outsiders knew of the stupidity I brought on myself, and yet I didn’t celebrate with my staff for working together as a team to overcome a major obstacle. After all the stress and hard work, I, as the leader, failed to seize a golden opportunity to show my appreciation to the staff, who had demonstrated outstanding teamwork in response to an emergency.

Our judgment was based on assumptions and association. We knew Benjamin Ng, one of the Wah Mee murderers, but we didn’t know his partner in crime at the time. The police had not released his photo. In our files, we found a photo we had taken earlier at a community event. It was of Benjamin Ng standing next to another young fellow. We showed the photo to many community members to see if they recognized the guy in the picture. No one did.

As soon as the papers were printed and brought into the office, we received a phone call telling us that we were wrong.

Even to this day, mainstream papers commit the same flaws in the hopes of scooping other media. It happened recently with the Chicago Sun-Times, which originally reported that the Virginia Tech gunman was of Chinese descent rather than Korean. That mistake created an uproar in the online Chinese community, both nationally and globally.

Never again will I permit the publication of such an important photo or story without double-confirming the content. Over the years, I have even given scoops to mainstream papers due to our lack of manpower and resources in investigative reporting.

An apology to the Filipino community

It’s not my job to write apologies. I did it once in my 25 years as publisher, even though I didn’t write the story myself.

In an open letter to the Filipino community, the Northwest Asian Weekly apologized for a 1996 article about the visit of former President Corazon Aquino drawing “only” 900 people to Meydenbauer Center instead of the hoped-for 2,000.

Words have the power to heal as well as wound. The negative headline and tone of the story infuriated some Filipino leaders, for they had worked so hard to bring the world leader to Seattle, and the Asian Weekly failed to acknowledge their efforts. It was an oversight in the article! By any standard, 900 people at any gathering would be a remarkable success!

Former state Rep. Velma Veloria, an organizer of the Aquino dinner, called me and cried after reading our story hot off the presses. Although she never asked for an apology, I took responsibility as publisher of the paper. I was present at the dinner and was thrilled that the Filipino community had invited me to a reception prior to the dinner so that many community members, including myself, could have a chance to take photos with the former president.

As I gathered my thoughts in that short piece, I wasn’t worried about my ego. I regretted that my staff simply did not recognize the monumental task of bringing a former head of state to this country. Imagine the amount of behind-the-scenes effort it took to raise money for the event, bring the community to a consensus, sort through the complex bureaucracies of the U.S. and the Philippines, and coordinate details and security.

In retrospect, I was not a good coach when it came to orienting my staff to be sensitive and thoughtful towards the community, and to develop compassion instead of criticizing and finding faults. The community had given everything it had to bring Aquino here and to put Seattle on the map.

Many times, we have to cover events from the community’s perspectives rather than the viewpoint of a typical journalist, who looks for accuracy in the number of attendees. We learned afterwards not to make a big deal when there is a wide discrepancy between our observations and the organizer’s count. Being the first Chinese newspaper in the Pacific Northwest since 1927 and the only local Pan-Asian English-language weekly, we didn’t have role models to learn from or guidelines to follow. As we create our own rules, we have become pioneers in our field. We learn the craft through trial and error. For the past 25 years, we have earned trust and respect from our readers one story at time, one week at a time and one issue at a time.

The apology I never gave

Progress is not built in one day. Running a newspaper is like going to school and learning something new every day, as I said earlier.

About the same time we published the Aquino story, I wrote an obituary about Chinese community leader Yuen Wong that upset his family. I was immature then. I wrote about the controversy involving him as the leader of the Alliance of Chinese Organizations, which was a rival to the Chong Wah Benevolent Association. I was never proud of that story.

When a person dies, we should reconcile what he did in his lifetime so he can rest in peace and his surviving family and friends can live in peace, unless he had public notoriety. The family sent letters of protest. We never printed them because the family never returned our repeated calls and messages for verification.

I should have focused the article on his generous support of the community.

His wife, Hannah Wong, has continued to be generous with the community. She has been gracious and even attended some fund-raising events I organized with other community members. She has contributed thousands of dollars to many charitable groups.

On the record, I would like to apologize to Mrs. Wong and the Wong family for the pain I caused them.

Not a perfect mom

I can’t help but wonder: Had I stayed home with my kids, would things be different? Would they be more athletic and creative? Would they have gone to Ivy League schools? Would my son have been less rebellious during his teenage years?

When I started the Seattle Chinese Post, my oldest son was 3 and my younger one was a little over 1. I have to confess that I deserve a failing grade when it comes to balancing family and career.

There were some scary moments. A few months after I started the paper, I came home and found one of my children had stomach pains. Neither my husband nor my mother-in-law could figure out the problem, even though she had raised seven kids. One glance at my son and I knew he belonged in the hospital.

Later, the hospital told us his appendix almost ruptured. The doctor operated on him just in time.

What if I couldn’t tell normal stomach pain from the symptoms of a dangerous illness? It could have spelled disaster for my son and family.

I felt guilty about the whole episode, so I bought him a bunch of toys and showered him with attention. Soon, the doctor complained that I was spoiling my son.

I am also troubled by the idea that I didn’t take time to nurture their interest in the publishing business. If I had, would my children be able to transform the company of two little papers into a media empire?

Yet, would they be happy to inherit the papers as well as the stresses that go along with them? And would they sigh later for not following their own passions and missing the chance to test their abilities?

My kids, who grew up with the business, are actually intimidated by the task of taking over for me, as they have witnessed firsthand what their mom has gone through over the decades!

“Do whatever makes you happy,” I told them. I never wanted to force my children to do things they didn’t want to do. But as soon as I said that, I beat myself. Now I don’t have a successor or exit plan.

I am sorry that I couldn’t read to my kids every night or tuck them into bed when I had a print deadline to meet or a community event to attend. When my child begged me to cut his hair, I felt too tired and told him to go to a barber instead. Those were hard choices I made. I missed many moments of hugging, crying, yelling, cheering and laughing with them. When I think back, sometimes I get sad.
Despite the ups and downs, my late mother-in-law was impressed with our parenting skills. “They had frequent family meetings to share concerns with the kids, like where they should go to college,” she told my relatives. “They communicate with the kids.”

I am now benefiting from raising independent, understanding and open-minded boys who have adjusted well to having strong women in the household. I am sure my future daughters-in-law will benefit too!

Like their mom, my sons are entrepreneurial. One started a business when he was in college; the other started one after he graduated from college.

Now that my kids are grown, I’ve had another revelation. It is not where you come from that is important, but where you are going. It doesn’t matter that my children don’t have degrees from Harvard University. What matters is that they received their education in America, where opportunities abound. Now it is entirely up to them how they shape their destinies.

So many Americans come from humble backgrounds and yet they thrive because they don’t give themselves excuses for not succeeding. They don’t blame obstacles or other people in their lives. I am one of those people; I don’t let the past haunt me. Why create unnecessary barriers for yourself?

I realize how blessed I am. My children are the most loving human beings I could ever wish for. I look forward to making it up to my grandchildren. I swear to spoil them rotten. They will get my undivided attention.

My dream sections

Excitement, inspiration, strategy, drama and dealing with setbacks — all of that can be found in one section of the newspaper.

The sports section, of course.

I am not an athlete, but I envy mainstream papers with their numerous stories on Apolo Ohno, Ichiro and other Asian and Asian American professional athletes, as well as their articles on the numerous Asian American athletes at the high school and college levels.

Since the funding of sports programs for women was mandated by Title IX in 1972, we have seen a rising number of accomplishments by female athletes. As newspapers, we have merely watched from the sidelines, rather than covered them on a continuing basis.

If I knew how to play golf, would I be able to network more with big shots and get more business? I regret that I never found the time to learn. Golf is a time-consuming and expensive sport.

Hopefully our readers will help me fulfill my wish. Send us photos and information about your favorite athletes and your favorite sports activities so we can work towards that goal.

On my wish list, I would also add more coverage of the South and Southeast Asian communities, which include Laotians, Cambodians and East Indians. How much these communities have grown, and how seldom we extend ourselves to White Center and West Seattle to cover them in action!

My last regrets

I wish I had kept a diary in the past quarter of a century to remember all the fascinating people I met who were never featured in our papers because we didn’t have the space for them.

I should have documented all the interesting yet difficult adventures. So many of them are compelling stories, and yet I never have the time to write about them.

It is ironic that as an organizer of the annual Rainbow Bookfest, whose goal is to inspire and encourage people of color to develop book ideas, I am not an author myself.

It’s about time that I keep a journal and put my memories into words.

Next time: What is the one reason I am still a publisher? Fun!

Assunta Ng can be reached at assunta@nwasianweekly.com.

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