Les Salnick
VP Managing Director
The New Pathway Ukrainian newspaper has a history that goes back over seventy years. Over that period of time many changes have occurred in Canada, but few occurred in The New Pathway. In 1998 the board of directors of The New Pathways got an injection of new bodies, such as our publisher Walter Kish, managing director Les Salnick and VP Walter Maceluch. An idea was developed and a desire to bring this good publication into the twenty first century began to motivate our Board of Directors. The New Pathway was still an excellent newspaper, however, we were communicating with a readership that was dwindling and our circulation was obviously suffering. Many of us of Ukrainian decent whether first generation or fourth like myself cannot read Ukrainian or it takes forever to read one page. We also were concerned a drab appearance with no colour pages, lengthy editorial pages, and a five column newspaper that left a lot of blank spaces and gave some stories a disjointed appearance which at times annoyed some of our readers. To sum it up the new board completely analysed The New Pathway, we interviewed many of our readers, and hired a professional to help re-design and restructure our newspaper and then we went to work.
Four months later our first issue hit the streets. A completely new look for The New Pathway, starting with a complete restructuring of our format and going with a four column page, a bold new front page, a minimum of four colour pages per issue, 20% English editorial, a community column that published all Ukrainian events without charge as a benefit to our readers, many new editorial features, we hired a writer in Ukraine that sent us articles to publish on a regular basis, we purchased new modem equipment including a printer that would print newspaper size pages, and made many other changes which of course included a new rate card. The cost of this project was mainly borne by some members of our board of directors to the tune of over thirty five thousand dollars.
While this was happening, unfortunately our former editor left to begin a new career and our business manager left to have a baby and stayed at home. We began the chore of seeking some replacement staff. Needless to say the addition of Petro Lopata (General Manager/English Editor) and Ihor Kopestynskyy (Ukrainian Editor) were and excellent choice and they both worked well with knowledgeable seasoned staffers, Lesia Panko and Teresa Olowianczyk.
"Stop this nonsense! This is sacrilegious! We don’t want any changes. We don’t need or want any English editorial!" Fortunately this was just the view of a small number of people who felt that the old look and editorial language as well as editorial position was what the Ukrainian community needed and looked for.
As time went by most of these readers changed their minds, however we still get dribs and drabs of complaints regarding the addition of English editorial most of which comes in anonymously which tells us what kind of people we are dealing with. The really good new is that we now get many, many accolades, which tell us something special.
What’s the point of this story?
Ihor Kopestyknskyy was invited to attend the National Trade Centre on September 1, 2002, by the The Ethnic Press Council of Canada.
On that date, the Honorable Jean Augustine, Secretary of State for Multiculturalism, and the Honorable Sheila Copps, the minister of Canadian Heritage presented and Ihor Kopestynskyy accepted (on behalf of the Editorial Staff and Board of Directors of the New Pathway) a very special award.
The New Pathway was given the award as having the BEST EDITORIAL AND DESIGN of any Ethnic publication in Canada in 2002. There were over 800 ethnic publications publishing in 121 different languages to choose from. Furthermore, The New Pathway was the only Slavic Publication to receive any awards in 2002.
Congratulations, We are very proud of Our Board of Directors and Editorial staff and recognize the effort and hard work it takes to achieve an award of this magnitude.
Thank You All.