“The ‘A’ is before the ‘O’, as in Oprah,” exclaims Bessy Lee-Oh, the CEO/Publisher of the new Asian American magazine called The Big A. “We plan to be big with an initial print of 700,000 copies for distribution nationwide”.

Launching a new publication at this time seems going against the grain because traditional media, as we know it, has been declining around the country. The four major TV networks have been losing millions of viewers and venerable newspapers like L.A. Times, N.Y. Times, and Baltimore Sun have watched their circulations down sloping in horror. Thousands of reporter jobs are slashed across newsrooms, large and small alike. The Internet age and the emergence of ethnic populations in America have changed the media industry dramatically.

Lee-Oh, the former ad executive at Greenspun Media Group in Las Vegas, and her diverse team of Chinese, Filipino, Vietnamese, Thai-Laotian, Korean, and Mexican ancestries, believe Asian Americans, who are among the most educated and highest income earners, are underserved. They are almost invisible especially during this presidential election, she adds, because they, though accomplished in their careers, are both modest and unaccustomed to speaking out. “Our Big A magazine will be loud with role models, top executives, athletes, writers and Hollywood stars”. Traditional print media maybe down but the Asian demographic is up as a viable economic group to target, according to Lee-Oh.

Came out of the ‘60s civil rights movement, Asian-American was a term coined as an alternative to Oriental, which was perceived to be derogatory and colonialist (Wikipedia). “The ‘Orientals’ don’t value life the same way we do” was a controversial remark made by General Westmoreland, the top U.S. commander in Vietnam during the war (Hearts & Minds documentary 1974). Today Asian Americans, 13.5 millions according to U.S. Census 2005, are defined as Americans whose ancestors originated from the regions of South Asia (i.e., India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka), East Asia (i.e., China, Japan, Vietnam), and islands in the Pacific (i.e., Samoa, Polynesia, Micronesia).

Despite efforts to build a cohesive Asian American group over the years by many social and political organizations, interaction between Asian communities is still not at the desired level. One of the barriers is language, as many foreign-born Asians (52% of total Asian Americans, U.S. Census 2005) are still more comfortable with their native tongues of Korean, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, and Khmer. While other ethnic groups have at least one common cultural language like Spanish in the Latino community, Arabic among Arab Americans, and English within the African American population.

The Big A is not treading on a new path of serving the younger and higher income sets of Asian Americans. There are publications like A Magazine, Audrey, Giant Robot, Asia – The Journal of Culture and Commerce, Hyphen, Thirteen Minutes; online magazines like Asians In America and Asiance Magazine; and TV networks like ImaginAsian TV and AZN TV. All have been targeting the emerging English speaking Asian demographic for years. The success rate, however, is mixed.

Most notable was A Magazine, founded in 1989 by Jeff Yang, which reached its peak with 200,000 in circulation and expanded into the dotcom business with Click2Asia. Thirteen years and $4.5 millions later, both the publication and the Internet venture were folded in 2002 (Wikipedia). When news that AZN, an Asian American TV Cable network was being cancelled by its owner, Comcast, late last year, it caused a small earthquake in the Asian community. Comcast cited that ad revenues were not enough to support it.

“But the most troubling concern may be the chilling effect this could have on current and future media for Asian American audiences. After all, if a giant like Comcast can’t make a business out of providing Asian Americans with original programming, investors and advertisers might have a hard time believing that anyone can,” writes Jeff Yang in the SF Chronicle’s online SF Gate. Yang is the same former publisher of A Magazine who is now a book author and columnist.

But Bessy Lee-Oh is undaunted by of all of that history. She is planning a giant launch of The Big A in Beijing, China, on the same date that the 2008 Olympics is set to open on August 8.
—By Julian Do

The Big A Magazine is headquartered in Las Vegas.