Organization
Khmerican
Khmerican is an online news outlet for Cambodian Americans, based in Long Beach, California.[1] Phatry Derek Pan and his childhood friend Sophath Oun founded the website in 2011.[2][3] It reports on Cambodian American communities across the United States and features people from them, such as artists, entrepreneurs and students.[3][2]
Name
"Khmerican" is a word for a Cambodian American. Pan told the youth news site VoiceWaves that he first heard it in the mid-1990s from Phanit Duong, who had made it up as the name of a martial arts kick. Duong is the real name of the comedian Hella Chluy. Pan gave the word a new meaning, began using it for Cambodian Americans in 2003, and later used it in a profile he wrote for the Phnom Penh Post.[3] The site describes a Khmerican as a person or organization working to improve life in Khmer America, a definition the International Examiner quoted in 2012.[2]
History
Pan came to the United States as a refugee at the age of four and grew up in Kelso, Washington, near Seattle.[3][2] The web address was transferred to him in 2005, and he kept it for years without a clear plan for it. After several years of reporting in Cambodia, he decided that Cambodian communities in different American cities knew too little about each other.[2][3]
Oun, a co-owner of a web development firm in San Diego, built the site. The International Examiner, a Seattle newspaper, dates its launch to September 2011.[2] In 2012 Pan said the site had 20 reporters in more than nine states and about 14,000 visitors a month.[2] Pan started the site in Seattle and later moved to Long Beach, which he called the center of Khmer America.[3] By 2015 he put its readership at about 750,000 a month, two thirds of them not of Cambodian descent.[3]
Coverage
Pan has said the site set out to show Cambodian Americans beyond the common images of gangs and the genocide.[3][2] VoiceWaves names Hella Chluy among the people it has featured.[3] The Phnom Penh Post called it a popular website, quoting its description of the rapper C Crave as "the hottest rapper in Khmer America".[4] In 2012 Pan told the International Examiner that the site publishes a post each year to mark the genocide, and that its writers shared news against the deportation of Cambodian Americans.[2]
In June and July 2015, Khmerican joined the YMCA of Greater Long Beach on a road trip across the United States, from June 22 to July 3. Its aims were to raise awareness of street children in Cambodia, raise funds and record Cambodian American life along the way, and Pan said the group would pass through 27 states.[1]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Long Beach Post, Keeley Smith, Long Beach-based Khmerican Teams with YMCA on Nationwide Advocacy Trip (June 30, 2015)
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 International Examiner, Ana Knauf, Being Khmerican (May 2, 2012)
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 VoiceWaves, Kallayan Thuch, Khmerican: Connecting the Cambodian Diaspora (March 20, 2015)
- ↑ Phnom Penh Post, Meet the Black Voice of Khmer Hip-hop (undated)