a doorway to ethnic media in the american heartland
Archive for April, 2009
April 30, 2009 at 1:31 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
This is a test, a real life test. And if ever there’s a test of how well the ethnic news media connects then this is it.
What is the flu and who does it attack and how dangerous is it? For the Latino news media, this is the story of the day and as shown by this centerfold from Hoy, above, there are a number of ways to reach readers.
What makes this centerfold so powerful is the simple use of graphics and details to convey some basic facts. But this is not a one-day story. It is about health care, and health awareness and the ability of large numbers of persons to get the information they need.
What is the impact on families with relatives in Mexico? What is happening to businesses and others who regularly cross the border to Mexico? How about parents who take off from work to care for children or relatives? And what about the medical professionals they turn to?
Much can be done in print, on the radio and on television. Here is an unusually long and extremely helpful guide to information about the swine flu. It comes from a reporting source that can be a handy and essential tool.
http://www.reportingonhealth.org/
http://www.reportingonhealth.org/resources/lessons/swine-flu-useful-resources
April 7, 2009 at 4:24 pm · Filed under Reporting on ethnic communities, digital story telling, the state of the ethnic media in the US
If all else fails it, the ethnic news media can always count on one thing to survive. It is a connection. It is a legacy. It is a memory. It is another way of listening, hearing, seeing. It carries the sound that lasts for generations.
As yet another wonderful NPR program reminded us today, the success of some ethnic media amid the stunning collapse of American journalism is their ability to link one generation after another with a common root, and to keep their eye on what matters.
It is the ability of some Latino radio stations to capture the imagination of second and third generation Latinos with a delicious presentation of Spanglish.
Its the powerful appeal of Korean or Chinese television stations that tell the story of our daily lives in the rhythm of the place where we now live but in the language of where we came from.
And it is the ability to satisfy the hunger of immigrant parents and their children and their children’s children who want to be able to feel as if they are living within the same story though generations and countries separate them.
What works for the Ethnic New Media
The ethnic media can continue to thrive by speaking out and speaking for their communities. By staying focused on this mission and doing its job in the most creative way possible. By staying update in technology and business strategy so it can get by on less in these hard times. By learning to share with others in order to survive. And by not giving up.
Here are the NPR programs.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102802880
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102705139
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94472417
April 6, 2009 at 4:00 pm · Filed under Business strategies, latino news media
You need advertisements to survive. But you are not getting them. They are out there. But they are going elsewhere or to bigger competitors.
Here’s an idea that can be a long-lasting solution. You form an agreement with similar publications in the same situation. This gives you a much larger audience to present to advertisers.
This is what six Chicago area Latino newspapers did last year. They formed a coalition called HOPE, Hispanic Owned Publications Enterprise. Together they explain to advertisers that they represent more than 121,000 readers in Chicago and the Suburbs.
The publications are: Chicago Deportivo, el Dia, el Imparcial, La Prensa, Nuevo Siglo and Teleguia de Chicago. All of them belong to the National Association of Hispanic Publications, http://www.nahp.org
Officials with the National Association of Hispanic Publications say the Chicago experiment may be the only one of its kind currently taking place in the nation.
“We are Latin owned. All of us. So we can make the argument to advertisers that they helping minorities when they help us,” explains Ezequiel Banda Sifuentes, a co-editor of Nuevo Siglo newspaper. http://www.nuevosiglonews.com
Zeke Montes of Teleguia de Chicago says the idea is based on the national coalition that the National Association of Hispanic Publications has created. He is the new head of HOPE, the Chicago-area coalition.
What has been the difference?
The results have been slim and there have been some problems.
But that does not discourage the group, says Banda Sifuentes.
“We are in a stage of experimentation. We are more than willing to expand,” says Banda Sifuentes
The publications have also begun sharing articles as a way to expand their resources.
And that too seems like a very smart lesson in how to survive today.
They can be reached at hope.seis@yahoo.com
April 3, 2009 at 10:36 am · Filed under immigrant journeys, story telling
They were sitting under the tree to keep out of the heat. They were hungry. They hadn’t eaten anything in days except the fruit they found on trees. They were terrified and they were wildly hopeful.
They were five men and a woman. They were from Belize and I came across them in a small town in southwest Mexico, just across from Tecun Uman in Guatemala. They were waiting their chances to jump aboard the train – la Bestia – the horrible train that immigrants would take from the border northward through Mexico on the way to the U.S.
I was walking along the tracks with a middle-aged Mexican priest who was new to the community and wanted to see what was happening to the immigrants victimized by the gangs and corrupt police and crooks and the brothels in town. I remember them asking him to pray for them and the way they stood and bowed in stunning silence as he did so for them.
The arrival of a new movie – Sin Nombre - here brought this suddenly back to me. But it also reminded me how many immigrants have powerful stories to tell about their crossing, their terrible frontiers, their days of hunger and doubt. And I wonder how these stories can be told, as in this movie, by ethnic newspapers and radio stations here.
Some suggestions for print, radio and television
Wouldn’t it be stirring if there were a regular feature where people could record their passage?
This is the soul of reporting, and story telling.
I imagine it could be a digital audio box on a website, or a three-minute program on the radio. I can see pictures and possibly videos recounting these stories. Not all of them of the horrors, but some of the joys of the journeys. It could be a project involving interviews for youth radio or articles written by young reporters or a long open invitation on a community blog for others to share their histories, and their legacies. Think crowd-sourcing and social media.
This is what the ethnic news media did 100 years before and now and what it will most likely continue to do. We cannot turn our faces away from what we left behind. Whether from Honduras or Senegal or Bosnia or Vietnam. The passage will never leave us.
Here’s a trailer for the movie:
http://www.hulu.com/watch/60270/movie-trailers-sin-nombre
And here is an article from Hoy (the headline is above) that tells about the movie:
http://www.vivelohoy.com/entretenimiento/vlh-vh-portada-0403apr03,0,6197374.story
And here is an interview with the movie’s director.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6U8xMDN0kg&feature=related
April 2, 2009 at 4:35 pm · Filed under African-American news media, Comedy
Before the laugh, first comes the smile. It sprawls and grows and then becomes the laugh, throaty and deep, and then the laugh settles back into a smile.
Toure Muhammad is laying out his vision for the nation’s one and only black satirical publication. Something that will be funny and critical, something hip and on the edge, an entertainment guide to black Chicago, and a place where, when people go online or when they pick up the paper edition, they will feel at home and at ease.
It will be like sitting around with friends or family over some bean soup, and that’s what he calls it, his Bean Soup Times. But as he explains this all, he also slips in a joke so fast you didn’t know it was coming. Like, “Did you hear about all the young Kenyans who are headed for Kansas?”
Back to his dream which he actually has been working on for some time.
Eight years ago he sent an e-mail to friends and that became a website and that became a printed publication too. The Bean Soup Times made people laugh but then he had other work to do. So, it took a snooze. But now he is back at it with a head full of plans.
If you know anything about him you might wonder where the humor fits in with all of his work and sometimes people do ask him that.
Afterall, he did start out as a reporter for The Final Call, and then worked for the Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice here in Chicago and then worked for Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in Chicago and until very recently was a spokesman for U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush.
“I’ve always been a little silly,” he explains.
