The challenge

In New York, where the large, English-language media dominate the debate on most public issues, public officials and mainstream journalists tend to overlook the vision and insights of the news publications springing from the city’s ethnic, immigrant, and low-income communities. This oversight had particularly alarming ramifications after September 11, 2001, when New York’s Middle Eastern, South-Asian and Arab populations suddenly were rendered suspect and vulnerable.

These alternative media outlets play a crucial role in reporting the news and mobilizing readers. But immigrant and ethnic reporters often lack access to public officials and resources that mainstream newspapers take for granted. For decades, advertisers also have preferred the large, big-name media, with their economies of scale. In recent years especially, many of these outlets have been consolidated and homogenized—further marginalizing people outside the mainstream.


Seeds of commitment

Abby Scher believes in the power of the word. She grew up in a family of New Deal Democrats in once racially-segregated city of Yonkers, just north of New York City. As a student at the University of Chicago in the early 1980’s, she was uncomfortable with the increasingly conservative student press. At the same time she recognized the power and influence that the media had on public perception, discourse, and decisions. To be effective in seeking progressive social change, she realized “the need to use language all people can hear. When we cease to listen to where people really are, we risk becoming marginalized in struggling for justice.”

Returning to New York to integrate such insights into her own life, Scher earned her Ph.D. in sociology from the New School University in 1995, then worked as a journalist and editor for publications addressing social and economic justice, setting in motion the events that would lead her to the ethnic side of the newspaper world.


Accomplishments

In 2000, Scher founded IPA-New York, associated with the national Independent Press Association (IPA). IPA works to promote and support independent publications committed to social justice and a free press. As IPA-New York’s director, Scher provides technical assistance and information-sharing to a network of ethnic newspapers and magazines serving immigrant and low-income communities. Particularly valuable to independent journalists has been IPA-New York’s Independent Press Club, which Scher founded in 2001. The press club offers face-to-face access to newsmakers who might otherwise not return phone calls from small publications. Past IPC events have featured New York’s police commissioner and schools chancellor and the state attorney general.

Access has been a major theme for Scher. After September 11, she created “Voices That Must Be Heard,” a weekly e-mail and Web publication that translates and presents the best of New York’s ethnic press to the rest of the city, and beyond. Through IPA, she has generated a group ad-placement service for the ethnic press that last year generated $600,000 for participating publications. Scher also launched a program that supports 14 Immigrant Press Fellows, to hone their knowledge of immigrant legal rights and other issues. Her concise, yet comprehensive study of the ethnic press of New York resulted in Many Voices, One City: The IPA Guide to the Ethnic Press, a 200-listing directory. A bridge-builder, Scher stimulates discourse across ethnic barriers, helping groups with long-standing animosities, such as Arabs and Jews, and Indians and Pakistanis, to work together on common problems.


Her Leadership style

In an organization with more than 80 members from a diversity of cultural backgrounds, a collaborative and transparent leadership style is essential, Scher says. “I am a white, secular-Jewish woman working with Bangladeshi and Pakistani Muslim men, Polish-Catholics, African-Americans, as well as very religious Jews with whom I have political differences,” she says. “We have to build trust.” She says she accomplishes this by listening and communicating as openly and clearly as she can. “Abby is building a community that previously did not exist: a community of leaders from the city’s immigrant and ethnic papers,” says Andrew White, director of the Center for New York City Affairs.

“Trust comes from being transparent,” Scher herself adds. “I am not from most of the communities I work with. So I need to be collaborative and open, to provide opportunities for the communities to set the agenda. This is not always easy, and I don’t always succeed. It is a goal.” She involves IPA members and staff alike in planning strategies, setting agendas, and implementing programs. Together, members and staff identify needs and build partnerships.


The future

Scher says she will create new programs to strengthen the power of the ethnic press, expanding IPA’s editorial services, fostering more exchange among member publications’ editorial staffers, and creating jobs for under-employed immigrant journalists. She also intends to create a low-cost, nonprofit translation service to help unions, government agencies, and community organizations provide better outreach to immigrants.

An even larger goal is the creation of an independent press bloc, linking ethnic publications with the nation’s few remaining independent mainstream dailies and weeklies. The objective: to provide an alternative to corporate news media. “We want to make our new immigrant press fellowship permanent,” Scher says, “to support civic reporting that inspires communities and builds their power.” On a personal note, she anticipates returning to her own journalistic roots, to edit a magazine addressing social justice issues and hiring writers from many of the communities she has helped to reach a wider audience.


More about Abby Scher and IPA

“Abby came and found us at the Coalition, and she added jet fuel to what we were doing. Her combination of community organizing, journalism, and policy advocacy is unique.”
— Suman Raghunathan, New York Immigration Coalition

“Abby has helped put ethnic newspapers on the map. Our reporters gain access through her. I’ve been in the business for 15 years, and I see how remarkable this is. She’s been able to do it because she’s tireless and tenacious.”
— Garry Pierre-Pierre, Publisher, Haitian Times newspaper

“Abby is an exceptional organizer with a strong belief in the power of networks to generate positive change. I find ‘Voices that Must Be Heard’ to be a wonderful resource, a keyhole through which I can view the parallel cultural and political worlds in the city’s very diverse print media.”
— Andrew White, Director, Center for New York City Affairs, New School University Robert J. Milano Graduate School of Management and Public Policy, New York