Opinion: Journalism for the Latino community with a mission

Today I am writing about passion. About Latino Journalism. From La Opinión, CALÓ News, HispanicLA, The Sun to El Informador del Valle de Coachella, Latino journalism is journalism for the Latino community with a mission. With a Latino identity. With a meaning of representation, and solidarity. By Latino journalists that are embedded in their communities because they belong in them and from there they can write about immigration, labor rights, the rise in gang violence, growing without fathers, corruption in local government, the beauty queen, drug overdoses, incarceration, educational barriers for Spanish speaking students, access to health care and again, immigration.

Even when the small outlets don't have staff to report breaking news on a regular basis, we represent the state of mind of the community.

The banner on top of the logo of every print edition of La Opinión says "Con la comunidad hispana cada día." I wrote that years ago. But this has been true since 1926.

When the economic crisis of 2008 hit, the young staff of the new website used to call us the "Legacy." But they were the first to go when layoffs started. All of them but three in one day. So it is not entirely true that the internet caused the crisis in print.

This was just the beginning. All the copy editors were terminated in one day. Then the photographers. They had to sell the printing press and dozens of workers lost their jobs as well. Same for IT, HR, sales people, administration. And reporters, one by one. Very sad.

And then there was a chain reaction. Instead of a broadsheet format in 2014 we moved to tabloid. After many years of one CORA (quarter) the price of the paper increased. And again. Circulation kept shrinking. Advertisements went down. From 44 or 36 large pages we went to small 32, 28. The decimated team was not able to create the same product.

Then the cycle started again.

Also our readership was getting older. The next generation spoke Spanish but didn’t read it. The newer one neither spoke nor read Spanish. Now the tide may be changing. There is a renaissance of respect of Spanish among Latino youth. This means that more people need us. A renaissance of our hope.

We survived. Our readers are still interested in understanding our society and we explain it. “La Opinión nos informa. Nos representa. Nos defiende. Nos entretiene”.

La Opinión today is a small miracle, still printed every day of the year.

But many others, as you know, have stopped publication. Others kept firing journalists, cutting off the cadre of those who can distinguish between truth and fake news and conspiracy theories. This election is going to be framed around who we trust. But when our community will come with questions, we may not have the answers.

And immigrants will be crucial to the campaigns. So it is more important than ever to support them. For that, we need more support than ever.

Solutions

In the newsroom, we can continue to improve and innovate and diversify.

Another solution is building an organization that represents us, the publications, the reporters, the editors. Unidos se puede. We are experiencing it now in the Latino Media Collaborative.

And a voice that can lobby for us in Sacramento.

And representation that works to achieve some justice in the distribution of advertising money from the government.

And an alliance with non-profits that are committed like we are committed to the community.

There are already dozens of Latino outlets that have authentic roots in society and keep trying. Every new initiative should support the existing outlets and look for ways to ally with them in developing the solutions.

Spanish media newsrooms, reporters and editors need more support than ever and funding has to go to their survival, so we can write the stories that are still waiting.

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