Sea Beez History

The Sea Beez was founded in the spring of 2010 by a group of 4 news media outlets and 4 community leaders. Their belief is to strengthen the capacity of ethnic media practitioners, which in turn strengths community forums. The Seattle diverse neighborhoods use ethnic media outlets to efficiently communicate with each other and with other communities. Create benefits for Seattle to generate a more informed new Americans and existing minorities who may prefer to access local news coverage in their own cultural language. Neighborhoods now will have access to an online conduit of communication for local ethnic media to use as a tool to bridge different organizations (e.g., government, non-profit, private businesses) and diverse ethnic communities throughout Seattle Metro Area.

The “Sea” in “Sea Beez” comes from the “Seattle” and the “Beez” symbolizes the bees in a hive of hyperlocal news. Sea Beez will become the third website in New America Media’s ‘Beez” series for hyperlocal ethnic news. Its predecessors are the LA Beez in Los Angeles and the Nola Beez in New Orleans.

Founder:
Dr. Julie Pham, is the founder and director of www.seabeez.com and monitors ethnic media in the Northwest for New America Media. She is the managing editor and co-owner of the Northwest Vietnamese News/Ngouoi Viet Tay Bac.

Steering committee:
Dennis Beaver, Publisher, The Facts
David Cho, President, AAT TV
Gustavo Montoya, President, El Mundo
Karen Rathe, Lecturer, UW Department of Communication
Dr. Skip Rowland, Executive Director, Urban Enterprise Center-Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce
Christine Takada, President & CEO, National Asian Pacific Center on Aging
Mohamud Yussuf, Publisher, Runta

Partnerships:
Sea Beez forges many community partnerships with many local non-profit service organizations, government agencies, and private businesses—all of whom are interested in reaching out to all ethnic populations by volunteering their expertise and time leading relevant workshops.

Chen Communications
Comcast
Seattle Public Library
Washington Newspaper Publishers Association
University of Washington-Communication Department
University of Washington-Business and Economic Development Center
US Census