is features writer with five years of experience covering the companies that shape technology and the people who use their tools.
The WeChat channel 纽约移民记事网Documented (or the New York Immigrant Chronicle) is part newsfeed and part public service. The channel, run by the nonprofit newsroom Documented NYC, is filled with local news for Chinese speakers in New York: stories about healthcare and immigration arrests, but also information on local events like toy giveaways, places where families can get free groceries, and affordable housing lottery listings. Followers can also contact reporters directly — to send them tips, of course, but followers also turn to Documented for essential questions: Where can I find free English classes? What should I expect at an upcoming court date? Should I travel as a green card holder?
For many newsrooms, WeChat isn’t the first place you’d think of to distribute news. But April Xu, who covers New York’s Chinese community, realized Documented needed to have a presence on it. Many immigrants coming to the US from China are already on WeChat, a platform that functions like an everything app, combining X, Facebook, Venmo, online shopping, news, financial services, and more. It’s semi-closed, meaning users can only see content from their contacts, and it’s an essential way for Chinese immigrants to stay in touch with family and friends.
“That’s why they’re still so sticky with this app,” Xu says. “But it’s provided us an ideal platform to reach out to those Chinese speaking immigrants.” Xu is in over 50 chat groups for New York’s Chinese community, each of which can have up to 500 members. She also runs a smaller Documented reader group chat.
Xu covers just one slice of the audience Documented hopes to reach. The nonprofit news outlet serves a range of immigrant communities in New York, with a special focus on producing work that immigrants can use: guides, how-tos, explainers, and more. More than a third of New Yorkers are immigrants, with the largest share being born in the Dominican Republic, China, and Jamaica. Documented stories are available in English, Spanish, Chinese, and Haitian Creole.
For years, mainstream news outlets have turned to tech platforms to disseminate information, bending to the will of third parties that played nice with publishers — until they didn’t. So deep is the media’s reliance on social media platforms that algorithm tweaks, shifting priorities, and changing political winds can crater newsrooms’ reach. When publishers need an intermediary platform to reach their audience, they don’t truly own the relationship. Documented thinks about reach differently. The outlet publishes on the web but also on specialized platforms — WeChat for Chinese speakers, WhatsApp for Spanish speakers, and Nextdoor for the Caribbean community.
Immigration has been one of the biggest stories of 2025, as the federal government has caught up thousands of immigrants — and even some US citizens — in its data-powered dragnet. But often, news that’s relevant to immigrant communities is inaccessible to the people who need it most, published only in English in outlets or on platforms that the community doesn’t use.
“Immigrants want information that is actionable in the languages that they speak and on the platforms that they’re on.”
“It would never serve them, and it wasn’t for them,” says Ethar El-Katatney, editor-in-chief of Documented. “For us, the big two things are: immigrants want information that is actionable in the languages that they speak and on the platforms that they’re on.”
This dedication to meeting immigrant audiences where they are permeates through Documented’s work. El-Katatney says reporters spend between three and six hours every week personally answering reader questions and are encouraged to spend time in the communities they cover. Understanding the media ecosystem for immigrants is also essential, because each community gets their news in slightly different ways, on different platforms, or through various mediums. In 2019, I wrote about Hmong Americans who got news via unofficial radio shows hosted on free conference call software. If you’re a journalist and want to reach the people you are writing about, you have to go where the community is.
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