Pictures by Marcin Poznań of Nowy Dziennik.
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Dr. Czesław Karkowski sat in his office, located on the top floor of 333 West 38th Street, home to the understaffed daily newspaper Nowy Dziennik, which caters to the immigrant Polish population dispersed throughout New York City.
As the senior editor, Karkowski told a visiting class of journalism students about the paper’s “special task” of combining contrasting forces of Polish and American politics and culture in order to cater to readers’ interests, and, first and foremost, their understanding.
Late in March, before the students met with the chief editor, Ewa Kern-Jędrychowska, a reporter, gave them a tour of the headquarters with its cramped newsroom, a one-room bookstore, and an art gallery with a shiny wooden floor and black and white photographs by a Polish artist lining the walls.
Kern-Jędrychowska addressed the students first in the art gallery, explaining basic information about Nowy Dziennik, which, according to Wikipedia means, “The New Daily” in English.
Nowy Dziennik is very “understaffed,” Kern-Jędrychowska said. With only about 30 staff members, 10 in the newsroom, the reporters must multi-task, often working on more than one project at a time as well as being responsible for each aspect, rather than the standard practices of most newspapers where one reporter would be assigned one task, such as a featured article or breaking news story.
According to her biography on the website for the Center for New York City Affairs, Kern-Jędrychowska was born and raised in Warsaw, Poland, and moved to New York City in 2001. In 2004, Kern-Jędrychowska received an Ethnic Press Fellowship from the Independent Press Association of New York, a nonprofit organization supporting more than 100 independent ethnic and immigrant news papers – dailies and weeklies. Its ethnic and community press membership includes publications such as Arab Voice, News India-Times, Russian Forward, and Haiti Progres. IPA-NY, however, has become the New York Community Media Alliance.
The same year as her fellowship, Kern-Jędrychowska also received four Ippies, awards for outstanding journalism, given to ethnic press journalists every year by the IPA.
In 2005, she contributed to “Feet in Two Worlds: Immigrants in a Global City,” a radio documentary described on the website as a “story of transnationalism in NYC’s immigrant communities. The hour-long program feature[d] the work of journalists recruited … from some of New York City’s best ethnic and immigrant newspapers.”
She was also profiled in the New York Daily News April 8. “Ewa Kern-Jedrychowska didn’t come to New York City t o become an award-winning journalist in the Polish community.,” the article began. “As a 24-year-old immigrant from Warsaw, Kern-Jedrychowska arrived in March, 2001, with dreamy notions of living on the lower East Side with her French boyfriend of four years.” And they broke up, according to the story, and the rest is history.
And in the little art gallery, she almost forgot to mention to the Hunter students that she is currently at Hunter herself, pursuing a masters in anthropology.
But even with these credentials, Kern-Jędrychowska stressed the everyday hardships she has faced in her work at Nowy Dziennek. Though the paper, founded in 1971, is the largest Polish news publication in New York City, heavy competition actually exists with three other Polish daily publications also based in New York. The competition is heightened because the community is so small, and Nowy Dziennek is always struggling financially, said Kern-Jędrychowska.
On Mondays-Thursdays, the paper is sold for 60 cents. On Fridays, the price is raised to 75 cents, and on the weekends it costs $1.25. But Kern-Jędrychowska said that the paper doesn’t make any money from these sales.
She also said that the increasing activity in the Internet use has been taking away from possible income. Though Nowy Dziennek has a website, Kern-Jędrychowska said that it needs work, but improving it is not a top priority because the newspaper’s main readership is comprised of older immigrants who don’t primarily use computers.
Kern-Jędrychowska wanted to introduce the students to the staff, who popped their heads out of their cubicles one by one as their names were mentioned. They were reluctant to be involved with the tour, however, because it was around noon and they were extremely busy trying to meet the deadline for the day.
Kern-Jędrychowska said that unlike most New York newspapers, the Nowy Dziennek publishes in the afternoon, an “old habit” from Poland, she said. Instead of New Yorkers grabbing The AM on their way into the subway during morning rush hour, Polish citizens pick up the paper on their way home from work in the evening.
Because of this tradition, a typical day’s work at the Nowy Dziennek runs slightly different. From 8 a.m. to 9 a.m., the staff members have a “cover meeting” where they choose the cover story for the day, Kern-Jędrychowska said. By 12:30 p.m., the reporters must submit their work to the proofreading department which checks grammar, but doesn’t deal with the actual content of the stories. Then the paper is sent to “lay-out,” she said.
But because the Nowy Dziennek is so understaffed, many of the busy reporters do more than just write the stories. They even assist phone callers on the weekends, handling queries such as where the best Polish doctors are or even how to get around on the New York City subways—general questions on just surviving as an immigrant in New York.
Kern-Jędrychowska said that the staff tries to be as helpful as possible, and if they are unsure about an answer, they make several phones calls and try to find answers for their dependent readers. But sometimes these answers don’t come easy. Kern-Jędrychowska said that it’s “always a struggle” to get information.
Though this may cause many difficulties, frustration, and persistent phone calls, Kern-Jędrychowska said that it inspires a “sense of a mission to do this kind of work,” and it’s what propels her forward. A New York Times reporter would never experience that same feeling of completing a “mission in journalism,” she said.
Perhaps the most difficulties arise in Nowy Dziennek’s internal intricacies and juxtapositions. In in his office, Karkowski reiterated the difficulties of balancing the two cultures in which his readership is immersed. The paper includes American news, but Karkowski said that American politics and events are less appealing to the readers who crave information about the latest Polish soccer match. He said that this lends itself to the ultimate challenge that he and his staff face, what he considers a “paradox of service,” he said.
This paradox exists because while Karkowski wants to assimilate the immigrant community into American mainstream culture by continuing to publish in Polish, he is keeping them separate. Then again, the inherent culture of Polish immigrant citizens enriches New York City and help define it’s “melting pot” status. Through their uniqueness, they form a bonded community with one another.
How can this contradiction be resolved? How can the community maintain its original cultural identity and still thrive by America’s standards?
Karkowski didn’t offer a solution because he seemed to see the paradox as a challenge, a chance for him and his dedicated staff to rise to the occasion of community service. He said that to be a reporter for an ethnic newspaper requires much more than for those who work for mainstream American newspapers. His paper must stretch its borders, with one foot in Poland and the other in the States.
For Nowy Dziennek to be successful, Karkowski has come to understand that his editorial staff must be “present in both worlds,” he said.
The WORD’s Monica Levy can be reached at Mle0043@hunter.cuny.edu.