June 13, 2005

By MARK BALDWIN
Regional executive editor, Gannett Wisconsin Newspaper Group

In late 2003, the Wausau community learned that more than 500 Hmong immigrants would be arriving in town from a refugee community in Thailand.

It wasn't the first time such news had reached Wausau. The first Hmong refugees arrived in Wausau in 1976, about a year after the end of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam. The Hmong — agrarian people who lived in the hills of Laos — had been U.S. allies during both the Vietnam conflict and the so-called Secret War against Laotian communists sponsored by the CIA. By the end of 2003, the Hmong accounted for more than 4,500 of Wausau's 38,000 residents.

	Click on the above photos to view larger versions.

The Wausau Daily Herald had provided intense coverage of the earlier waves of Hmong immigration, even sending a reporter-photographer team to Laos in the mid-'90s. The paper also chronicled the integration controversy that divided the community as the schools mobilized to serve the immigrant children, a conflict that eventually led to the recall of five school board members.

That was the context in which the Daily Herald crafted plans to cover the immigration of 2004-05, and it led us to think deeply about the newspaper's responsibility to our current and potential Asian readers and to the wider community.

What could the newspaper do to help Wausau social service agencies, health care professionals, educators and ordinary residents prepare for the additional refugees? Most were expected to arrive speaking no English and carrying little more than the clothes on their backs.

What could the Daily Herald do to help the refugees negotiate their new lives in Wisconsin?

What was the responsibility of our editorial page in preparing the community for the refugees?

Here is how the answers to those questions played out.

For years, the Daily Herald had a trusting relationship with the Hmong community. When we learned about the new wave of immigration, we intensified our outreach to the Hmong community and others charged with meeting the needs of the new refugees, primarily educators and social service and health care providers. From the outset, we told the group we wanted them to help shape our coverage. Most of our meetings opened with variations on this question: What does the community need to know, and when, for the new refugees to succeed?

Our outreach quickly produced an important insight. Most of white Wausau knew next to nothing about the history and culture of the Hmong. The schools taught little or no Hmong history, and the newspaper's coverage of the culture had traditionally been of the bread-and-circuses genre, focused primarily on the annual Hmong New Year celebration. The community needed a crash course in Hmong history and culture. So in April 2004, Daily Herald inaugurated Hmong History Month.

Each day during the month, we published a short profile of a Hmong history maker from Wausau or elsewhere in the international Hmong community. Every Thursday during the month we published a longer package exploring one aspect of Hmong history and culture, along with a list of suggested readings and Web resources that allowed readers to explore further on their own.

Hmong History Month quickly caught on with teachers, who used our reporting in class. In addition, the governments of the city of Wausau and Marathon County issued proclamations declaring April to be Hmong History Month.

It wasn't a one-time effort, either. The second Hmong History Month was this past April and included an exhibit of Hmong artifacts at the local historical society and a community reception for newly arrived refugees. We've already begun planning for next year's event, and a state legislator from Wausau has asked Wisconsin's governor to declare a statewide Hmong History Month next April.

We realized, too, that our editorial page would play a key role in ensuring the refugees' smooth transition to Wausau.

First, we offered our enthusiastic support to the Refugee Welcome Project, an effort by Wausau social service agencies to assemble the beds, tables and other household supplies needed to furnish the 80 or so apartments that would become home to the refugees.

Almost as important, we used the editorial page to set an uncompromisingly welcoming tone for the newcomers. Our hope was to ease the transition for all members of the community, and it appears that we did so.

Peter Yang, who heads the Wausau Area Hmong Mutual Association, told us last summer that he had been stopped on the street by people who asked, "How's the resettlement going? Can I help?"

Years earlier, amid the first waves of Hmong immigration, people had stopped Yang more than once to say, "Go home, and take the others with you."

The highlight of the news coverage was last summer's journey to Thailand by three journalists from Gannett Wisconsin Newspapers. They were reporters Keith Uhlig of the Wausau Daily Herald and Hlee Vang of the Oshkosh Northwestern, and photographer Sharon Cekada of the Appleton Post-Crescent. Vang had lived the Hmong immigrant story herself.

The three spent two weeks in Thailand documenting life at Wat Tham Krabok, the site of the Hmong refugee community north of Bangkok, and home of the 15,000 refugees bound for the United States, 3,000 of whom were headed for Wisconsin.

Uhlig, Vang and Cekada produced "Starting Anew," which was published in multiple installments in July and August and offered readers glimpses into camp life and into the radical transition facing the refugees. We reported on the work skills our new neighbors would bring, the schooling that had been available in the camp, the refugees' exposure to American culture, and the health concerns they faced, among other topics. In addition, we taught readers some etiquette — don't shake hands with a refugee of the opposite sex, for example — and provided some common Hmong phrases.

All along, we have challenged ourselves to do journalism for the Hmong community, not just about it. To us, that meant providing the Hmong, and those interested in Hmong issues, the news and information they need to make the most of life in Wausau. That desire led in October to the creation of Hmong Connection, a free monthly tabloid. About 1,500 copies are distributed across the community.

The early editions of Hmong Connection were mostly in English and contained mostly copy that had run previously in the Daily Herald. Beginning with the April edition, however, Hmong Connection changed course to better serve the target audience.

The most important change was that large portions of news and advertising content now appear in the Hmong language. Some articles are published in English and Hmong, an approach that our advisers in the community say will help non-English speakers become familiar with the community and ultimately strengthen their English skills. We've also added features like Hmong riddles — bits of wisdom wrapped in humor and passed along by elders in the community — plus folk tales and a calendar listing cultural events in Wisconsin cities with large Hmong populations.

Many of the changes to Hmong Connection were suggested by News Assistant Xai Kha, who joined the staff late last year and whose presence has deepened the newspaper's relationship with the Hmong community and expanded our ability to reach non-English-speaking readers. Kha provides translation for the daily newspaper and often accompanies reporters into the field to interpret for Hmong news sources, and he has played a key in diversifying our source contacts within the Hmong community.