Who We Heard From
The survey ran in English with Nepali translation alongside every question, open from June 4 through August 1, 2026. Thirty two people from across Queens and beyond took the time to respond, most of them longtime New Yorkers who already know NepYork.
Most people who answered this survey already read English comfortably and many already follow NepYork, which means this pilot round captured the newsroom's core audience well but not yet the full community NepYork wants to reach. That gap shows up clearly in where respondents live.
Four more respondents live outside Queens and four live in another Queens neighborhood not listed above.
How Queens Gets Its News, and How It Wants To
Facebook leads by a wide margin, both as where people already get news and as where they would like to keep getting it. Nepali-language websites remain a major source even among people who read English comfortably, which says something about trust and comfort, not just ability.
Video podcasts on YouTube stand out as underused today but wanted for tomorrow, with about one in four respondents currently watching NepYork on YouTube while nearly one in three say they would prefer to get news that way. That is a direct vote of confidence for the video podcast series already underway.
Trust and misinformation
Misinformation is a daily reality for many respondents. More than a quarter see false or misleading information in Nepali community groups or pages almost every day, and nearly three quarters see it at least occasionally. When something seems untrue, the largest group checks NepYork or another trusted outlet first, ahead of a general web search.
In their own words
The survey's most important question asked what one thing NepYork could do to make life easier. These are unedited responses.
I have so many Nepali friends that would love to read the news of what's happening in our community but they are unable to read Nepali, so a website like NepYork would be life changing for our 1.5, 2nd, and 3rd generation. A lot of them don't know it exists.Survey respondent, C3
NepYork could offer an affordable lawyer Q&A service as a subscriber benefit or for a small fee. Reliable legal guidance, especially on immigration and documentation matters, would be very helpful to the community.Survey respondent, C3
More outreach to the bottom line of society, rather than always reaching people at higher professional and celebrity levels.Survey respondent, C3
कमसेकम हप्तामा एक दिन निर्धारित समयमा मुख्य समाचार नेपाल र अमेरिकाको सम्प्रेषण गर्दा राम्रो, पक्षपात बिनाको मिडिया होस्।A set weekly time for main news from Nepal and America would help, and media without bias.Survey respondent, C3 · translated from Nepali
Civic Life and What the Community Wants Covered
Respondents feel moderately connected to city politics on average, but language is the single biggest barrier they name to taking part in civic life, ahead of immigration fear and work schedules, which tie for second.
Immigration coverage is not close, it is the top request
Nearly four out of five respondents chose immigration as a topic they wish the community understood better, more than double the next closest topic. Every other need on this list, from housing to mental health, competes for a much smaller share of attention. For an editorial team choosing where to spend limited reporting hours, this is the clearest signal in the entire survey.
Safety and Wellbeing
These questions touch on domestic violence, mental health, and fear of government systems. Because the sample is small, the numbers below describe this group of 32 respondents and should be read as a signal to follow up on, not a citywide statistic. All figures are shown only in aggregate, with no names or identifying detail attached to any answer.
Two threads run through this section. First, roughly half of respondents describe domestic violence as a lived or nearby reality, which lines up with why NepYork chose it as a video podcast topic this summer. Second, confusion rather than refusal is the main reason people miss out on benefits they qualify for, since not knowing a program exists or not understanding the process outweighs distrust of government as a stated reason.
What Happens Next
Half of respondents said yes outright to a thirty minute listening session with NepYork this summer, and another quarter said maybe. Twenty five of the thirty two people who took this survey left a name and a way to reach them, which is the beginning of a community contact list NepYork can build on well past this internship term.
The share back event on August 12 is a beginning, not a wrap up
These findings, the listening sessions building on them, and the video podcast series they help shape are the start of an ongoing conversation between NepYork and the neighborhoods it serves. The clearest next steps are to bring the survey directly into Corona, Flushing, Rego Park, Forest Hills, and Long Island City, to follow up individually with the twenty five people who offered their contact information, and to keep publishing what the community said back to the community, in both languages.
Methodology and Limits
This report summarizes 32 responses to the NepYork Community Listening Survey, a bilingual English and Nepali questionnaire built for NepYork's summer 2026 Listening Post initiative. The survey was open from June 4 through August 1, 2026 and was distributed through four channels working together, LinkNYC kiosk advertising placed across Queens, posts in Facebook groups serving the Nepali and Himalayan community, direct email outreach, and NepYork's own audience of readers and followers.
Because a large share of respondents were reached through NepYork's own audience, alongside broader public channels like LinkNYC and Facebook groups, this sample leans toward people who already know and trust the newsroom, who are comfortable reading English, and who live in Jackson Heights, Woodside, and Elmhurst. It does not yet represent Corona, Flushing, Rego Park, Forest Hills, or Long Island City, five of NepYork's ten priority neighborhoods. Percentages in this report describe the 32 people who answered each question and should be read as an early signal from a pilot round of listening, not as a citywide or community-wide statistic. Expanding outreach beyond this initial mix, through community boards, library branches, and other trusted spaces, is the top priority for the next round of listening.
Responses by date, June 4 to August 1, 2026. A late push in late July, tied to renewed outreach, brought in a third of all responses in a single week.