The New Pathway

By Volodymyr Kish

The New Pathway Publishers, Limited, the corporate entity behind this paper, will be holding its annual meeting on Saturday, May 29.  Such meetings are typically a relatively routine mix of speeches and reports that summarize significant developments over the past year and afford the Board of Directors and editorial staff an opportunity to voice their ideas, concerns and hopes for the coming term. 

The most important item on the agenda is the election of a new Board of Directors. This year the Nominating Committee has made a determined effort to try and add some “new energy” to the Board with the intention of injecting this fresh energy as well as creative thinking into the Board’s operations.  For the past several years, the Board of this newspaper could have been more dynamic or engaging than has been the case.  Meetings have not been well attended and most of the significant burdens have fallen on three or four individuals.  The result has been that though the paper has been successful in terms of circulation, finances and editorial operations, fresh growth and development need some significant work.

One has to realize that being on the Board of a Ukrainian newspaper like the New Pathway requires a significant commitment to roll up one’s sleeves and actually do something.  It is more than just attending a meeting every month or two to voice opinions, pass judgments and make decisions.  It requires dedication, effort and a willingness to take on the challenges that the paper is facing, and the challenges are many.

First and foremost, the paper needs to grow its readership and overall circulation.  To do this, it essential that we reach as many of the 1.2 million individuals of Canadians out there who are of Ukrainian ancestry as we are able.  The current readership base of four or five thousand is insufficient to insure the long term future of the paper.  We have to focus on and find ways of reaching all those hundreds of thousands of second, third, fourth and fifth generations of Ukrainian Canadians.  We have to find ways of reaching the twenty to thirty thousand Ukrainians that have immigrated to Canada in recent decades as part of the so-called Fourth Wave.  To do that, we need members on the Board that understand those readership sectors and can develop strategies to reach them effectively.

The paper is also facing a technological challenge as the age of the Internet and electronic media is making deep inroads into traditional publishing.  The New Pathway must find a way of migrating intelligently into the new media while maintaining an adequate revenue stream and satisfying the older generations of readers that are only comfortable with the standard printed newspaper format.  We need members on the Board that understand this new technology and can develop strategies to exploit it effectively and profitably.

The paper is facing an editorial challenge in trying to address the needs of a very fragmented Ukrainian community here in Canada that is split along political, religious, generational and immigration wave lines.  From the 1930s to the 1990s there were literally dozens of Ukrainian papers and publications that catered to these specialized segments of the Ukrainian population and there was sufficient support both financially and in terms of readership to keep them going.  Over the past two, three decades however, as the original generations that created and supported these publications died off. These papers, magazines and periodicals disappeared with increasing frequency to the point that only a handful is left.  Obviously, to survive within a shrinking pool of interested readers and subscribers, a Ukrainian paper needs to attract a much larger base and variety of readership.  It cannot afford to be parochial or limited to a particular political, religious or demographic line. The New Pathway has always strived to be open minded in its outlook and its editorial policy. We need members of the Board whose vision and understanding encompasses the whole of the Ukrainian community out there without artificial limitations.

The last and most important challenge is to create a stable financial environment that will allow the paper to grow, develop and invest in initiatives and strategies that will build it a viable successful future.  We need members on the Board that are financially savvy, that know how to raise funds and that will help manage the paper and its finances wisely.

There are high hopes that this meeting will result in significant changes to the makeup of the Board, that the majority of the Board will be composed of fresh new faces with new ideas, new energy and a desire to keep this newspaper as the standard for all Ukrainian papers in the Diaspora.