nwasianweekly.com
August 4,
2007
Northwest
Asian Weekly file photos
Publisher Assunta Ng (right) greets the guest of honor, Seattle
Mayor-elect Norm Rice, and his wife Constance Rice at a victory party
in 1989 at Four Seas Restaurant in Chinatown/I.D.
How
did miracles shape my dream job?
By Assunta Ng
Northwest Asian Weekly
Editor’s note: This is part 11 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.
Call it luck, chance or fate. I consider it a miracle.
Miracles have happened to us a lot over the past 25 years …
How else could a young woman, an outsider to the community, start the first Chinese newspaper in the Pacific Northwest since 1927, when three other males tried but failed to do the same? How else could this newspaper become a success when the Chinese population in 1982 was merely 10,000? Isn’t that too small a market for a newspaper?
Statistics show that most new businesses do not last five years. One female head of a nonprofit agency in Chinatown/International District prepared me for the worst: “Don’t ever dream that your newspaper will thrive,” she told me. “Just think of it as your community service.”
When four out of five newspapers fail in this country, including newspapers more than a century old, how can little, traditional-looking newspapers like the Northwest Asian Weekly and Seattle Chinese Post — which resisted the trend of flashy colors in their first 23 years — not only survive, but prosper with a building of their own in 2001? The Northwest Asian Weekly went full-color only in 2005.
Instead of attributing the achievements to hard work, my counterpart at the newspaper Nguoi Viet Tay Bac (also known as the Northwest Vietnamese Weekly News) called it pure luck! Our old office at 414 Eighth Ave. S., where we stayed for about 15 years, had great feng shui, the Chinese practice of environmental design to foster luck. This belief led the Nguoi Viet publisher to pay three years of rent to hold on to the empty space after we moved out. I don’t know what plans he had for our old office, but he never moved in. Finally, he relinquished the place back to the landlord, and now it houses a noodle restaurant.
Only by the grace of God can a tiny company like ours, in an effort to give back to the community, organize a three-week all-expenses-paid Summer Youth Leadership Program for 40-plus Asian American teens every year for 12 consecutive years.
How could the Northwest Asian Weekly, already challenged to survive, have the ability to raise more than $1.5 million for charitable and nonprofit organizations for the past 15 years? Coincidences? No, miracles …
Remaking myself and the company
“No matter at what age or under what circumstance, you have to remake your life,” wrote the late publisher of The Washington Post, Katharine Graham, in her autobiography “Personal History.”
Over the years, as I embarked on one project after another, the public has not been able to figure out if I was remaking myself, the newspapers or the company. Indeed, our identities are woven together like a zigzag pattern in a quilt, with no beginning or end. The outcome is the same, however. Whatever we do benefits and connects the community.
A newspaper
can make things happen and, sometimes, not happen. I learned that in
1989, when the Northwest Asian Weekly hastily organized a community
dinner to honor the first ethnic mayor of Seattle, Norm Rice, while
simultaneously asking for Asian American appointments in his administration.
At the time, I couldn’t recall anyone in the Asian community
embarking on a scheme like the Asian Weekly did.
The impressive number of appointments made by Rice set a precedent for
future government executives in our state to hire qualified Asian Americans
for their administrations. The successful outcome of Rice’s dinner
propelled me to redefine what is possible for the Northwest Asian Weekly
and the community.
Making things happen
When we organized Rice’s victory dinner after the election, we didn’t have the convenience of fax machines, e-mail or the Internet. We didn’t even have a planning committee. What began as the crazy idea of three women, Arlene Oki, June Chen and me, snowballed. Three weeks later, 250 people were having dinner with the mayor-elect at Four Seas Restaurant.
By running articles about the event and providing free advertising space, I literally turned the newspaper company into an organizing machine. It became clear that the Northwest Asian Weekly was more than just a newspaper!
In 1990, many Asian Americans broke the glass ceiling: Dr. Peter Ku became the first Asian American president of the Seattle Community Colleges; Dr. Wallace Loh, the first Asian American law dean at the University of Washington and in the nation; and Kimi Kondo, the first Asian American female judge in Seattle. We couldn’t let these achievements go by without a celebration. It was important the mainstream community knew that Asian Americans could be great leaders if given the opportunity to lead! Many guests at this celebration were mainstream and community leaders. The sold-out crowd surprised Ku, who came from the East Coast. Some of the people he met at the event became lifelong pals.
That’s when I realized my role as publisher did not need to be confined to the boundaries of the newspapers. Our accomplishments reach beyond the printed word; we’ve made things happen for countless individuals and groups in the community.
I never envisioned myself staying in the business for 25 years. Yet the opportunities to learn, improve, contribute, challenge myself and experiment with new ideas have moved me to explore, embark on adventures and take risks. There is never a day that I am bored.
Making a difference
In honor of the newspapers’ 10th anniversary in 1992, we raised $40,000 for Kin On nursing home so it could have a building of its own. At the time, we were two ugly black-and-white papers. I wasn’t even a board member of Kin On, and I had no intention to be. It was a proud awakening for us. I didn’t know we could raise money for charities!
The point is, anyone can do something good for an organization; there are many meaningful ways you can help without having a title.
With the help of many individuals over the years, we have raised more than $1.5 million for both mainstream and community organizations, including victims of Hurricane Katrina and the Asian tsunami, 9/11 victims’ families, children and women. Helping the poor and hungry, in particular women, has been my goal. It’s a remarkable achievement for a small company like ours!
Last year we set a memorable record. We raised more than $350,000 for nonprofit organizations in need by networking and holding two low-key events.
Breaking the rules
Had I not been a publisher of Asian American newspapers, would one of my clients invited me to serve on a judging committee for a corporation that had decided to award $300,000 in grants in the Puget Sound area?
Picking the grant recipients wasn’t the most gratifying moment, it turned out. Breaking the rules was.
Selecting the corporation’s interns was also on the agenda. The firm budgeted $10,000, including salary and training expenses, for every intern. Each of the judges was told to vote for five students. I couldn’t, in good conscience, choose just five winners because I felt there were six deserving students. Their resumes made all the judges react with “Wow, wow, wow!” However, we couldn’t compare any two candidates’ achievements; they were like bananas and watermelons! Picking one and not the other made me and the other judges moan and groan.
That’s when I appealed to the corporation to increase its budget so that one more young person could benefit from the internship program. My bold proposal stunned the committee members, and the organizers tabled my suggestion, giving me little hope.
A month later, my client told me that she found money so that a sixth student could be added to the list of winners. I felt bliss and gratitude.
Reading this, you might assume that I am stubborn and uncooperative. Actually, it is not my style to confront people. Nor do I enjoy grandstanding my ideas and breaking the rules. In this case, I did it only because I took my role as a judge seriously. The outcome of this judging process should not have been based on compromises. Whatever decision the committee made was going to affect the youth’s future profoundly. It is better for my client’s company to do good for more people than to hurt someone who might end up crying and wondering for the rest of his life what went wrong.
Creating original programs
When my
friend Penny Fukui expressed disappointment that women of color were
not being invited to mainstream community events, I thought about starting
a group for ourselves. “That’s a wonderful idea!” Fukui
said enthusiastically. Guess what would have happened if she had shrugged
it off. There would be no Women of Color Empowered (WOCE) today. It’s
so important to have friends who support, cheer and inspire you and can
serve as your sounding board.
Born in 1996, WOCE’s mission is to promote understanding among
women of all races and walks of life, and to encourage women to learn
and share their life and cross-cultural experiences.
I credit the Northwest Asian Weekly for helping found a women’s group and sustaining it for 11 years. The women’s organizations I belonged to two decades ago now cease to exist due to declining membership. Without membership fees, how can an organization function?
Amazingly, WOCE hasn’t asked for membership dues since day one, and it’s still going strong. Anyone who pays $20 for lunch is considered a member. That also entitles the member to a gift bag at every luncheon. Thanks to committed sponsors and volunteers, the lunch series draws hundreds of women and even men from all over Greater Seattle.
WOCE is only one of our programs. Through the Northwest Asian Weekly
Foundation, the nonprofit arm of the newspapers, we have offered the
Summer Youth Leadership Program, an all-expenses-paid three-week institute
for high school students since 1995. Every March for the last dozen years,
we have awarded scholarships to students who have made a reached out
across cultural lines in their schools and communities.
I shocked myself when I tallied up the total amount of scholarships we
have given out through our programs — close to $100,000 for Asian
and non-Asian youths!
Another original event we organized brought together Asian media from all over Greater Seattle for a political debate. In 1990, representatives from several different publications gathered to quiz candidates, including Martha Choe and Betty Patu. The turnout from the community was impressive too; 150 people attended the debate.
How we have managed to run these programs for so long is miraculous, as they involve lots of hard work, time and energy. Even the mainstream newspapers canceled their summer journalism camps years ago due to lack of funding and the amount of work needed to put them on.
I confess that when I started the programs, longevity was not in my plans. I considered them pilot projects for the first couple of years. Then, serendipity occurs when we least expect it or are feeling hopeless. Strangers walk into our lives and opportunities land in our backyard, giving us incredible support. I can never explain how any of it happens. It just does.
Don’t
ever let people tell you that miracles happen only once. They can happen
over and over again!
To all the sponsors, community leaders and supporters who have said “yes” to
young people over the years, I am deeply grateful.
Travel
When I travel, I combine pleasure and business so my trip can be tax-deductible. It gives me joy, especially when I can win an award for my travel article, “My extreme makeover in Hong Kong,” from the Society of Professional Journalists on June 2. That’s killing four birds with one stone!
I love to travel out of Washington state. It’s the only way to stop me from working. How many people are paid for what they love to do? My recent Malaysia article even tied in with an advertisement.
Many Asian immigrants are so focused on surviving that they have neither the time nor the money to travel overseas except to visit relatives in their native countries. So my travel articles serve as windows for immigrants to the outside world, according to my readers. How wonderful it is to have people appreciate our work!
It’s unusual that I can take three vacations a year, and I am grateful to my staff and son, who takes over the office when I am gone. That’s more than 30 days off a year, a luxury I didn’t have when I started the paper. It was only after years of running my business that I took a vacation with my entire family. Before, my husband and I took separate vacations so one of us was always there to watch the papers.
What’s a dream job?
A dream job gives you freedom to do what you want, when you want — and get paid for it! I am blessed to be able to shape my job into what I want it to be.
Am I having fun?
The answer is obvious. Even after 25 years, I still get excited about the stories and editorials we do, especially those that make a direct impact on the community or wake up our government or the mainstream community.
My sense of compassion compels me to help people who confide in me because of who I am and what I represent. Although I am not a counselor by profession, I have reluctantly become one. Customers and readers consult me about their personal and professional problems. Many of these issues are not for print. What an honor to have their trust and respect! Despite the fact that I am unable to provide solutions in many of the cases, people seek me out simply because I am a good listener who can bring clarity and closure to their challenges!
My career even helped me raise my kids. When my son was a rebellious teenager, my uncle would tell him, “You don’t know how lucky you are to have your mom. You might not think much about what she says, but important and smart people ask for her advice.” Only then would he shut up and listen.
That same son, who grew up to be a capable and thoughtful gentleman, confided to my receptionist a few years ago that he was once a little monster who made his mom cry in anger.
Don’t ever tell me there are no angels!
Next time: finding passion through the challenges.
Assunta Ng can be reached at assunta@nwasianweekly.com.
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