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Amerikan Uutiset – a bridge over the vast continent
The Finnish immigrant press in the United States has a long heritage to foster. The first Finnish newspaper on the new continent was first published almost 150 years ago. The Finns have all together published around 200 immigrant newspapers. Of those, only two are left: Amerikan Uutiset that started in 1932 in New York Mills, Minnesota, and the local, left wing newspaper Raivaaja (Fitchburg, MA), which is over a hundred years old.
The paper was founded as Minnesotan Uutiset (Minnesota’s News) by news press owner Carl Parta and reporter Adolph Lundqvist. They wanted to create an unbiased newspaper for all of the Finnish-Americans living across the country. As the flow of immigrants started to fade in the 1950’s and 1960’s the local immigrant press was faced with financial troubles. Many immigrant newspapers around the area were integrated in order to strengthen the amount of readers. In 1965 the name of the paper was changed to Amerikan Uutiset with a goal of making it a national newspaper to be read all across the United States.
As the generations that had immigrated in large numbers to the United States started to retire, many moved to the warmth of the southern states. In 1986 Amerikan Uutiset moved to Southern Florida where a large concentration of Finns had formed. A decade later the legendary immigrant news paper New Yorkin Uutiset (est. 1905) merged with Amerikan Uutiset.
At a point in time New Yorkin Uutiset had a circulation of almost 15,000 papers. It had been established by Eero Erkko, who had founded Finland’s largest news publication Helsingin Sanomat.
Today the Amerikan Uutiset founder’s dreams have come true. Amerikan Uutiset has subscribers in every state in the United States, Canada and in Finland. The paper is published every other week, with Finnish as the primary language. However, Amerikan Uutiset also has correspondents around the country that report in English.
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