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-- "When we came to the United States, we didn't have a paper like this," says Olga Ordonez, who fled Cuba in 1962. "One would certainly have helped us adjust to the culture here." As owner of the weekly La Voz de Houston, Ordonez is now helping her fellow Hispanics adjust to life in Texas. Only five years old, La Voz has a circulation of about 40,000, thus edging out El Sol, the city's other major Hispanic weekly (circ. 37,000). Though La Voz owes much of its success to its exhaustive rundown of cultural and social activities, Ordonez is proudest of the paper's international coverage (La Voz receives news from abroad via UPI satellite). She keeps an especially sharp eye out for foreign news in the paper's own backyard. When a Catholic bishop from Nicaragua delivered a speech in Houston last summer, La Voz published the lengthy text. Neither of the city's two English-language dailies covered the event in such detail.
The paper derives much of its lively quality from Editor Maria Melero, who is only 23. A graduate of New York University and, like Ordonez, a Cuban immigrant, Melero favors features that help immigrants adjust to Houston. She assigned a reporter from the eleven-member staff to write a series on the different sections of the city's barrio. The paper's municipal coverage concentrates on explaining how local government works. Melero regularly runs requests from readers seeking the whereabouts of friends. For Ordonez, La Voz should educate as well as inform. "I'm most proud of being a means of communication, especially among those who do not know the language," she says. "A paper is a means of union. We seek always to unify our readers and to help them improve."
-- As the flow of Korean immigrants rose during the 1960s, Andrew and Peter Ohm heard the knock of opportunity. The two brothers answered it in 1967 by starting Korea Times, now a prosperous daily (circ. 13,000) based in Queens, N.Y. Of the six foreign-language papers serving New York's 150,000 Koreans, Korea Times is the oldest and largest.
The paper is divided into two sections, one with stories from Korea, whose pages are made up in Seoul and flown to the U.S., and the other consisting of local stories written by the staff's 14 reporters. Besides offering advice on immigration and taxes, Korea Times reports on the costs of fruits and vegetables, information that is of great interest to the estimated 1,000 Korean-run produce stands in New York City. "If a wholesale price has changed, we put it in the paper," says Auy Kuan Park, Korea Times' associate editor.
The Ohm brothers (Peter came to the U.S. from Seoul in 1955, Andrew ten years later) face a dilemma common to owners of immigrant papers. Their mission is to help newcomers blend into American society, but they also have a pragmatic stake in preserving the group's language and traditions. Korea Times meets this challenge by sponsoring an unusually wide range of activities, including a Miss Korea-New York contest and an annual parade down Broadway. "We like to teach Koreans how to survive in this country," says Andrew Ohm. At the same time, he adds, "whatever we gain from the Korean community, we like to give it back."