What I Learned About the Ethnic News Media
Jessica Rosenberg was one of four interns from Columbia College who worked this summer at ethnic news media in a program set up by the Community Media Workshop.
Here is a brief essay she wrote at the end of her assignment:
It’s not easy being a gringa writing for a Spanish-speaking newspaper. Cultural sensitivity and language skills cannot come close to knowing the Latino immigrant experience. And as Latinos come to be the largest minority group in Chicago – and the United States – this knowing is the very reason ethnic media is so important.
As an outsider, I didn’t know that Latino immigrants tend to be distrusting of banks and as a result, stash their money in their houses. I didn’t know that it was common for Latino immigrants to work 2, and sometimes 3 jobs to make ends meet – recession or not. I didn’t know that out of deep respect for their parents, young Latino gangbangers will go to great lengths to conceal their belonging to a gang.
These facts may have been obvious to Latinos, but to me, it was a newsflash. Confronting these cultural nuances made it difficult for me to differentiate between what was really news and what wasn’t. It was news to me foreclosures were hitting Latino communities harder than white neighborhoods. But to residents of Pilsen and La Villita who already know it’s a problem because they live it everyday, how do you give them information they can use? I figured it out, but it required several instances of not being afraid to look, or sound, stupid.
In the eight weeks I was an ethnic media intern, I learned that the strength of ethnic newspapers lie in their ability to voice the cultural nuance of their community. Latino readers can’t pick up a major newspaper and have their culture and opinions validated like most white people can. And on a larger scale, I truly understood how valuable newspapers – all newspapers, that is – are in reflecting the values and voices of a community, culture and generation.
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