The Work of Ethnic Minority Journalism
Helen Cheng
Introduction
Subervi-Velez (1984) argues that ethnic minority media fulfill a “dual role”, i.e., they simultaneously help contribute to ethnic cohesion and cultural maintenance on the one hand, and encourage the assimilation of their readers to mainstream society on the other.
But how do ethnic minority journalists achieve the dual role in their daily practice?
What are the forces that enable and limit ethnic minority newspapers and their journalists to perform such a role? How does ethnic minority journalism inform us about journalism and minority communities in general?
In order to answer these questions, I worked for Ming Pao Vancouver , a Cantonese daily, as an intern reporter from August 2004 to October 2004. I would like to use my own personal experiences and two case studies—the Richmond Double Murder Case and
Yang Li Wei Visiting Vancouver to illustrate the work of ethnic minority journalism.
Ming Pao Vancouver is one of four North American editions i
of Ming Pao, a Hong
Kong newspaper owned by a Malaysian Chinese, Datuk Tiong Hiew King, whose businesses include rubber, lumber and other industries. Ming Pao Vancouver started its operation in October 1993 with its reporting, advertising and production office located in
Richmond, British Columbia. The opening of Ming Pao Vancouver was to capitalize on the influx of Hong Kong immigrants in Vancouver in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
There are now about 365,485 Chinese immigrants living in metropolitan Vancouver
(Statistics Canada, 2004). With a daily circulation of 29,000, Ming Pao Vancouver is one of the top three media that Chinese immigrants consume everyday (A.C. Nielsen
Canada, 2002). About two-thirds of the content of Ming Pao Vancouver are directly from its parent company in Hong Kong. But there is also a team producing local content. As of
May 2004, the reporting/editorial department has 18 working staff ii
, including one chief editor, one assistant chief editor, one managing editor, two editors, two editorial

2 assistants, one assignment editor, one assistant assignment editor/reporter and seven reporters iii
. Other content departments include sports, business news, feature, translation and photography.
The slogan of Ming Pao Vancouver at its grand opening ceremony was to be “a
Canadian newspaper that speaks Chinese”. In other words, the newspaper positions itself not just as a bridge to relate readers to their homeland, but also to the host society.
But how does it achieve such a goal? What are the enabling and limiting forces?
Factors in common with other news organizations
Like any other media organizations, Ming Pao Vancouver is shaped by an organizational culture and professional routines. First of all, it is an organization aiming to make a profit, with news as the daily commodity. Therefore, meeting deadlines is a common constraint on journalists who might want to do more investigative research on stories. In Ming Pao Vancouver, a journalist has to produce two or three stories a day.
The second common force is that journalists rely heavily on news sources to define
“reality”, especially on those with political and economic power, such as government officials, political leaders, business organizations, social agencies, etc. As Hall et.al
(1978) argues, what is news and what is the nature of a particular news story is a social construction involving power struggles.
News is also a craftsmanship that has a set of “rules” in its genre and professional values. Ming Pao Vancouver ’s journalists are trained, formally or informally, with the western tradition of practicing the “inverted pyramid” as their writing style and “objectivity”,
“neutrality” as their guiding principle. It is a significant factor that they have to rely heavily on news sources to define the issue and to write the story.
Forces that are unique to ethnic minority journalism
Apart from the organizational and professional constraints that are shared by other media organizations, ethnic news organizations such as Ming Pao Vancouver have to

3 face unique problems and challenges.
First of all, the parent company is a major force shaping the work of ethnic minority journalism. For example, Ming Pao Vancouver adopts an unwritten “one China” policy.
The first rule I learnt in the newsroom is not to make mistakes on proper names
—people’s names, street names, event titles, etc. However, such rules and practices will have to succumb to the “one-China” policy. Vancouver’s Chinese organizations are comprised of those from Hong Kong, those from Taiwan and those from Mainland China.
Taiwanese organizations celebrate their Chinese National Day on Oct 10, which is different from the Mainland Chinese October 1 celebration. The paper covers celebrations of events on both days, giving them both a fair amount of visibility. However,
October 1 is called “the National Day” or “Chinese National Day”. Yet October 10 is changed into “Double Ten Holiday” (Shuang Shi Jie), even when the banner on the photo clearly wrote “Celebrating National Day Banquet” (Guo Qing Wan Yan).
Lack of financial and human resources is another challenge faced by ethnic minority journalism. Financially, the paper generates major revenue from advertising.
However, the paper has to compete with another two Chinese daily newspapers, two
Chinese television stations and two Chinese radio stations for local Chinese businesses who are the major advertisers. In order to maximize profit, Ming Pao Vancouver could not offer competitive packages to its employees. Apart from low income, ethnic minority journalists have to be fluent in both English and Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin). The few people who are qualified are usually unwilling to take a demanding job that pays so little. It is usually hard for ethnic minority newspaper to recruit reporters.
Limited financial resources also leads to a small news net. With only a handful of reporters, Ming Pao Vancouver can only try to cover local events in the metropolitan
Vancouver area. It does not even have a regular reporter in Parliament for provincial political news.
Because of a small news net, ethnic minority journalism has to rely heavily on mainstream news organizations for both content and news agenda. “Second-hand news”

4 is a common phenomenon for ethnic minority news organization. For example, Ming Pao
Vancouver had to borrow (translate) major stories that occurred outside the Metropolitan
Vancouver area from mainstream newspapers, such as borrowing photos from The
Province when the bird flu outbreak occurred in interior B.C. But most importantly, ethnic minority news organizations often follow the agenda of the mainstream news, especially in terms of local political and economic policies. BCTV and local radio stations are the best news source for Ming Pao Vancouver .
Because of its marginal position and limited readership, ethnic minority journalists are often much less important in the eyes of news sources. Therefore, the interaction is limited to the superficial level of the press conference. This is another reason ethnic journalists have to follow the agenda of mainstream news which have a much better social network to get an insiders or even exclusive information from news sources.
All journalists want to do good work. But most of the time, ethnic minority journalists can not fully achieve their goals due to the various constraints mentioned above. The so-called “ethnic story” is an opportunity for them to take linguistic and cultural advantage in pursuing stories. The extensive coverage of the two “big stories” is the result of
Chinese journalists’ effort in doing what they are really good at. All the journalists I talked to could not hide their satisfaction that mainstream journalists have to come to them for information in covering the Richmond Double Murder case.
An ethnic perspective also leads to close and co-operative relationships between ethnic minority news organizations and immigrant organizations. The community news section of Ming Pao Vancouver mainly covers events related to immigrant organizations in order to provide information to the readers and to encourage them to participate in such events.
With a limited readership, it is difficult for ethnic minority newspapers to diversify among different population sectors. There are currently two Cantonese newspapers in
Vancouver, Ming Pao Vancouver and Sing Tao Vancouver.
They are serving the same readers, competing for the same advertisers. I often half-jokingly said that Sing Tao

5
Vancouver is the invisible editor of Ming Pao Vancouver.
For Ming Pao Vancouver ’s journalists and editors, the worse possible thing is that the paper misses a “big” event covered by Sing Tao.
The mentality of “not losing anything” has also led to extensive coverage to both Yang Li Wei’s Vancouver visit and the Richmond Double Murder Case.
Whether an immigrant newspaper can sustain itself after the decline of the first generation immigrant readers largely depends on whether it can meet demographic changes in the reading community. For Ming Pao Vancouver, how to capitalize the influx of Mainland Chinese immigrants becomes both a challenge and an opportunity to survive into the future. In Ming Pao Vancouver, editors and reporters who are usually from Hong
Kong or Taiwan cannot take the new reading community’s taste for granted. Indeed, they have to do research to find out the expectations of their potential readers.
Conclusion
What can we learn from ethnic minority journalism? First of all, news is a social product, an outcome of the interaction among different forces. Second, an immigrant community can be conceptualized as both transnational, in which people’s sense of belonging stretches across national borders, and diasporic in which people coming from different places before immigration but now living in the same locale can develop a sense of belonging to each other. From my observations and reflection on Ming Pao
Vancouver , I conclude that the role of the ethnic newspaper is to narrate and negotiate the transnational and the diasporic sense of belonging in their work.
However, in order to better understand the role of ethnic minority journalism, I need to investigate the marketing aspect of it and to carry out audience research in the future. i
The other three editions are Ming Pao Toronto, Ming Pao New York and Ming Pao
San Francisco.
ii
One female reporter was still on a one-year maternity leave during the time period of my research. iii
Six full-time and one half-time.

6
References
Hall, S. , Critcher, C., Jefferson, T., Clarke, J. and Roberts, B. (1978). The Social
Production of News. In S. Hall, C. Critcher, T. Jefferson and B. Roberts (Eds.), Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order (pp. 53-77). Macmillan, London, pp.
53-77
Subervi-Velez, Federico Antonio. (1984). Hispanics, the mass media, and politics:
Assimilation vs. pluralism. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Wisconsin,
Madison, WI.