How ‘Sino Monthly’ Became a Mainstay in New Jersey’s Chinese Community : NPR

Ivy Lee is the founder and editor-in-chief of the independent Chinese-language magazine Chinese monthly. She compares it to milk: “Milk is nutritious. It’s very cheap and very easy to get.”

Mary Yang/NPR

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Ivy Lee is the founder and editor-in-chief of the independent Chinese-language magazine Chinese monthly. She compares it to milk: “Milk is nutritious. It’s very cheap and very easy to get.”

Mary Yang/NPR

EDISON, NJ — Bundles of free newspapers are stacked outside the doors of Chinese supermarkets in New Jersey. Plastered in brightly colored advertisements, most are backed by powerful institutions, whether religious groups, the Falun Gong spiritual movement or Chinese government-affiliated news agencies in Beijing.

Chinese monthly, a magazine that costs $1.25 per issue, stands out among the Chinese-language press for something else: its independence. It was founded by a local couple in 1991. They are still in charge.

“My magazine is like milk,” said founder and editor-in-chief Ivy Lee when asked how Sino Monthly had survived for so long. “Milk is nutritious. It’s very cheap and very easy to get.”

Sino Monthly, with six people on the payroll, was never intended to be an official newspaper. In fact, it is, having become a staple of New Jersey’s Chinese community.

“We tell readers where the Chinese are”

Ethnic media can be a lifeline for new immigrants who don’t have a good command of English. They introduce their readers to civic life in America and to each other. They can be especially helpful in places like New Jersey, where communities are scattered rather than concentrated in major cities. In this state, ethnic media is thriving, according to a new report from Montclair State University’s Center for Cooperative Media.

The first number Chinese monthly, at just 16 pages, conducted with newly released figures from the 1990 census. It counted 59,084 people living in New Jersey who self-identified as Chinese. (That number has since more than doubled.)

“We tell readers where the Chinese are,” says Lee.

Jennifer Lu, a yoga teacher who has lived in New Jersey for nearly 40 years, says she used to read articles from Chinese monthly to his children, now in their twenties and thirties.

“It’s a big help, especially for people who have just moved to New Jersey or the United States,” says Lu. still a lot of the magazine.”

Chinese monthly is nonpartisan, but Lee says part of its mission is to encourage readers to participate in the politics of their new home. The headline of an October 1994 article before the midterm elections read: “拜托!拜托!投下您神圣的一票”

Translation: “Please, please cast your sacred vote.”

Today, the magazine’s cover spans politics, economics, and culture. A recent story featured Deputy White House Assistant on Race and Equity, Jenny Yang, who grew up in New Jersey. Another shared the beauty secrets of local women in their 60s.

Rutgers librarian Tao Yang maintains an archive of Chinese monthly issues. They will help future historians understand the Chinese community in New Jersey, he says.

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Rutgers librarian Tao Yang maintains an archive of Chinese monthly issues. They will help future historians understand the Chinese community in New Jersey, he says.

Mary Yang/NPR

A record for future historians

Rutgers University Librarian Tao Yang keeps records of Chinese monthly numbers on three shelves in the basement of the school’s East Asian library. He says they serve as a record of New Jersey’s Chinese community and will help future historians understand its growth to become one of the largest in the United States.

“Not just cultural issues or political outlook, but also economic conditions,” Yang said. “Even the advertisements are useful.”

He notes Lee’s introduction from 1991. It reads in Chinese: “Mostly the mainstream media doesn’t get a lot of news about Chinese people. So the bottom line is that if Chinese people have problems, no one will know.”

“The Chinese don’t have access to the mainstream media, and the mainstream media doesn’t cover the Chinese,” the introduction continues.

“We still face the same problem today,” Yang says.

He says he frequently sees copies of Sino Monthly in his friends’ homes when he visits them. But he fears preservation will become an issue as more news is released online and physical newspapers break down.

“That’s the problem with collecting newspapers and periodicals. They’re not supposed to last forever,” Yang says, pointing to the yellowed pages of the 1991 issue.

Yang says preserving original printed copies is important, even when it seems like everything can be found online. “I’m a little afraid that history – the historic record of [the] Chinese community – will again be lost in the digital space,” he says.

Ethnic media thrives in print, researcher says

In addition to hard copies, Chinese monthly now has an e-magazine and a presence on Facebook and WeChat.

“We have to keep pace with the world,” says Lee.

But, unlike so many other news outlets, getting rid of print magazines was never a consideration.

“We still have many loyal readers,” she says. “Older readers, they are still used to the paper magazine.”

Ethnic media thrives on print, says Anthony Advincula, lead author of the Montclair State University report.

“The insularity of ethnic media, in terms of sustainability, helps them a lot,” says Advincula, describing a symbiotic relationship between small news outlets and their advertisers.

Advertisers, often readers themselves, find in these pages a market of customers looking for service providers who speak their language.

These ads, from local businesses such as realtors and insurance agencies, help ethnic media generate more revenue from print issues than online, Advincula says.

“They know their market: ‘Let’s stay in our lane’,” he says. “And they are fine.”

“I think the biggest challenge is now”

Yet the future of Chinese monthly is far from certain. The pandemic has made publishing and reaching readers more difficult, and Lee has moved his two publications – sino monthly oneand the advertisement filled weekly chinese news — under the same roof, closing off the office that housed his weekly newspaper.

During the first months of the pandemic, Chinese monthly took advantage of government financial assistance available to small businesses.

“After the pandemic, you thought the economy would grow. But actually it didn’t,” says Lee. “I think the biggest challenge is right now.”

Lee is now 63 years old. Her husband retired from his full-time job in software development a few years ago. They discuss what to do Chinese monthly. Although she has yet to find a successor, Lee says she refuses to let her magazine shut down.

“My business started from scratch,” says Lee. “So I know how to survive.”