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.