You didn’t see the story today on the state’s cutback in services on the front page in the Trib or Sun-Times but you can read it in La Raza. For thousands in Illinois, thousands who rely on others’ help and who,because of age or income or illness, cannot get the services they need except for the state’s support, this news matters.
And that is what is good when a paper la Raza realizes it and helps others do the same.
http://scher.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/29/the-parade/?th&emc=th
You are walking on a street. You know the man in the car repair store, and the two women in the bakery, and the old man in the grocery who smiles everyday to you, and who has been there for ever, and the shoe repair man who never has business but who is always happy, and you see one, no, two, no 10 people you know well from the neighborhood, and you see another 20 who you think you know and then you notice a few who must be new to the neighborhood and you study their faces and you wonder who they are and you keep staring and wondering as you walk on the street in your neighborhood that you know and that defines you and this is what a local newspaper, a radio station, a media connection does and can do when it talks to us in the places where we live – we look around us, as we walk in the crowd we know.
Read this small article in the New York Times and follow the video and I think you’ll get the message.
You want a picture of a parade in your neighborhood? You read your local paper. You want to know what’s doing at the new restaurant? And how about at the high school? You read your local newspaper.
It makes sense and that’s what this report says. While national papers are looking at the edge of the cliff and wondering how much time they have, local newspapers are hanging on in places long forgotten by the large newspapers.
http://www.ojr.org/ojr/people/emilyhenry/200906/1754/
The first thing each week when the Defender arrives I read Lou Ransom’s column but this week my eyes hit on the one by Earl Ofari Hutchinson and they stayed there.
It was about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
And when I was done this is what I said.
I said to myself that this is good writing, good thinking and a good thing I saw it because the words were nailed in, nailed in so strong they pulled you along, and because it reminded me that this kind of writing comes from people who love words and know how to use them, people who care about ideas and what they can do to people and a community and from a paper that serves its community and that’s what the Defender does.
Read it and tell me what you think.
Piolin talks about Latino Radio
It’s virtually the other story about the American news media. While mainstream news media is shedding its audience, the ethnic news media is gathering up its followers.
What’s the proof. Here are the results of a survey done for New America Media. The poll looked only at Hispanics, African-Americans and Asian Americans so the support for the ethnic media is clearly much larger.
The poll found that:
1. The number of adults reached by the ethnic news media has grown by 16 percent since 2005.
2. Spanish language radio and print now reaches 85 percent of all Latinos in the U.S.
3. Chinese language television stations and newspapers now reach 70 percent of all Chinese adults in the nation, up from 55 percent in 2005.
4. Korean-language newspapers are read by 64 percent of all Korean adults in the U.S., up from 46 percent four years ago.
5. English language publications aimed at Filipino and Indian readers are followed by 60 percent of the folks in these communities today.
6. Two-thirds of the nation’s African-American community listen to radio stations oriented toward them.
What’s going on here? Here’s my idea. People are turning to the news media that reflects them and their values, the news media that gives them stories they can’t find elsewhere. Like a good friend of mine explains why she reads only certain Polish newspapers in Chicago. “They have news I won’t find elsewhere.”
So, when you are out talking to advertisers, remember to hold up these facts. What they say is that there’s an appetite that is growing, and maybe advertisers and local officials need to realize this.
Here are the details.
They walk up and down in front of the hotel. There are speeches and cheers. And the next day’s story in the Sun-Times didn’t talk about the strikers but the latest legal wrangling by the union.
What about the strikers six years later? What about the maids and bartenders and others who took second jobs or floated from one low-paying job to another to get by?
What about the people who couldn’t speak good enough English to find another decent paying job though they had worked for years at the Congress Hotel?
There is a human story here that maybe only the ethnic news media can see. A story about resilence, about standing up for what you think is right. Standing up when your suffering only grows because of it.
Or a story about the painful search for a decent job when you are on the low-wage ladder and your language limitations and middle age makes it difficult for you to get your footing again? So you keep tumbling downward.
Or a story about what unions mean for immigrants and minorities. Or just a video about why someone who earns $8.83 an hour making up beds would put up such a fight?
You are walking up Cicero and see a new store. Hmph. Good for the neighborhood. It’s doing good. But what’s up next?
You see there’s a new doctor on Devon. He’s from Hyderabad, too. He tells you there’s a new Hyderbadi restaurant nearby and that a lot of his patients are doing well in their jobs but he worries about business along the avenue.
You stop in the super-mercado and stare. That’s whathisname, the councilman whose aunt came from Jalisco too and who has visited your son’s school. But what about word that the school might close. You worry.
This is why your turn to your newspaper or radio station or television. You want to know what’s happening in your life. And when the ethnic news makes that connection; when it makes people turn to it because they know it is their connection, then it is on solid ground.
Heed this advice from Mike Smith, head of the Media Management Center at Northwestern University.
People want to see themselves and their values in their news media, he says. They want to see live their lives, their pictures, their sounds in what you do for them.
So what does that mean?
It says you have to identify with your readers, your group, your community. You have to tell stories and give them information that they can’t get elsewhere. You have to talk on their level and talk as if you are talking into their ear.
If you do this, they will listen.
This is the same message you have to give to your advertisers. You know who is following you and you know they are relying on you. And you know who they are – the young and old – and what kind of lives they live.
For a full account of Smith’s description for business strategies for advertising and editorial decisions in the ethnic news media in these tough times, send me a note and I’ll make sure you receive one.
He recently spoke at one of our workshops.
Steve@newstips.org.
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