AsiaWeek to cease publication

As reported in New American Media, San Francisco-based AsiaWeek has stopped publication after nearly three decades of service.

AsianWeek is just the latest in a string of Asian-American media closures, including KQED’s Pacific Time, AZN Television, and the San Jose Mercury News’ Vietnamese-language supplement Viet Mercury. While most cities have trouble supporting one daily newspaper, he said, San Francisco has five Chinese-language dailies, offering not only local and national news, but a dozen pages of international coverage of news from Taiwan, mainland China, Hong Kong, and Southeast Asia.  But just as the mainstream media are being hobbled by declining readership and revenue, hastened by a faltering economy and growth of online media, their ethnic media counterparts are being squeezed too. “There are fewer major newspapers, fewer newspaper readers and fewer newspaper advertisers than ever before,” wrote AsianWeek President
James Fang, and Ted Fang, editor and publisher, in a letter to readers published in the newspaper. In the last few months, a handful of ethnic publications has gone the way of AsianWeek, scrapping paper editions and going online, reaching out to readers for help or pulling the plug completely.
Ted Fang said AsianWeek would continue publishing online and in special newspaper editions. He said, however, that all staff had been laid off. Fang said AsianWeek plans to do more community work, which Fang counted among the newspaper’s greatest “successes.” “Media is a part of bringing together APA communities,” he said. “We plan to organize around events… around issues and causes as a way of helping the community.”