A number of historians have described "Gidra"'s two stages of journalism. Hoang wrote, “These shifts in "Gidra"’s conceptualization of the Asian American movement reflect the writers’ emergent construction of an Asian American ethos, a subject position defined not only by racial otherness but also by social responsibility and third world nationalisms.” Historian William Wei wrote, “The first was devoted to learning the technical skills required to publish a newspaper, to defining what kind of paper it wanted to be, and, consequently, to defining what it meant to be Asian American and involved in the Asian American Movement; the second was devoted to covering the antiwar movement, counterculture lifestyles, and radical politics.” "Gidra"'s widened focus was also brought on in part by the UCLA strike and “police riot” against U.S. militarism in Cambodia in May 1970, along with the Kent State and Jackson State shootings.