a doorway to ethnic media in the american heartland
Archive for Covering the Census
April 7, 2010 at 11:57 am · Filed under Covering the Census, community reporting that matters
After the months of build-up here we are and the fate of the Census is a mystery.
With all of the hoopla and money is the Census count going to miss more people than before? Are some communities going to dramatically come up in their numbers and others fall behind?
With less than two weeks to go, now the time to do some reporting and it is easy to do it. The government updates the mail responses daily, from Monday to Friday and all you need to do is click on its website and then drill down to the communities you want to track. Go to http://www.2010census.gov and follow the tab that takes you to participation rates.
The figures will show the latest rate of participation and the same numbers for 2000.
The figures so far for Cicero, for example, show only a 48 percent participation rate while the number of 61 percent 10 years ago. Chicago is at a 51 percent rate, down from 58 percent a decade ago. And the rate in some Westside and Southwest side Chicago communities is running below 40 percent. In Orland Park it is 78 percent.
Tracking these figures, the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR) a few days ago said that the return rates in the immigrant communities where it has worked to get people involved shows that its work has paid off.
Remember if people don’t get counted, there’s less money for services and Cook County’s undercount a decade ago cost the community about $200 million.
So, check the stats and let your communities know what’s going on.
If anyone has any results you want to share and stories you think will help us see what’s happening, please let me know.
Here, for example, is a story from La Raza which uses this data to tell what’s happening now.
La tasa de devolución de los formularios del censo por correo en el barrio de Albany Park ha sido de un 44% hasta ahora, en comparación con la tasa de participación nacional, que se calcula en un 60%.
Stephen
February 24, 2010 at 5:24 pm · Filed under Covering the Census
When the government launched its pitch to the ethnic news media last year, it was very attractive.
We want you. Want you to help us. Want to help you. Want you to help us reach people who are unreached. That is how the mantra went.
The lure of advertising dollars rang in the ears of ethnic news media just scraping by.
But apparently the government’s desire to spread the word has been limited and not all ethnic news media have benefited.
If you reach an immigrant or minority community in the Chicago area that needs to make sure it is counted in this Census, especially one that barely took part in the last count, and you didn’t get any of the Census campaign funds, let me know.
I’ll pass your word along to the U.S. Census, New America Media and to the advertising firms in charge of locating the ethnic news media and allocating the federal dollars. Don’t give up.
You can reach me at steve@newstips.org or 312 369 6400.
Here is testimony from Sandy Close of the New America Media about this problem:
NEW AMERICA MEDIA TELLS CONGRESS TO USE THE NATION’S ETHNIC MEDIA MORE EFFECTIVELY TO INCREASE ACCURACY OF THE 2010 CENSUS COUNT
WASHINGTON-The US Census Bureau is missing opportunities to provide reporting instructions to diverse communities in the United States by failing to fully utilize the ethnic media that can reach more than 60 million adults in those communities, according to testimony from New America Media (NAM) in Congress today.
Sandy Close, NAM’s executive director, called the 2010 Census advertising program an “unprecedented investment” in ethnic and community media, having identified 3,000 media outlets across the country. But she cautioned that many key media outlets were left out, including 47% of those that attended roundtable sessions organized by NAM and the Census Bureau last year to learn how they could help with the count. She noted that several prominent African American papers had been excluded.
“Many are frustrated – they don’t know why they fell through the cracks. Some are bitter. All very urgently want a role – even if small – and believe, as I do, that together they can move the needle those extra percentage points,” said Ms. Close, testifying before the Oversight and Government Reform’s Subcommittee on Information Policy, Census and National Archives. Her organization represents more than 2,500 ethnic media outlets across the country.
The roundtable discussions organized last year included more than 600 ethnic media representatives in 12 cities from coast to coast. The ethnic media participating included media giants like Univision, Asian language dailies, BET and Clear Channel stations to established black and Spanish language weeklies, upstart radio and TV stations, as well as niche print and online outlets serving Burmese, Ethiopian, Arab, Russian, Mixtec, Punjabi and Samoan communities.
“Their hunger to participate in the 2010 Campaign is intense—you could cut the exuberance at these gatherings with a knife,” Ms. Close testified. “For many media, it was the first time they’d come together as a media sector in the same city. They get the Census: they get their community’s stake in a complete count, and they get their own.”
In citing the importance of an accurate Census count not only on federal dollars, but private ones as well, she noted the experience of Juan Carlos Ramos of the El Tiempo Hispanic newspaper in New Orleans. Mr. Ramos said the 2000 Census undercounted Hispanics in New Orleans and as a result Coca Cola dropped New Orleans, and his paper, from their national ad campaign.
Many ethnic media outlets are frustrated by being excluded from the Census advertising.
“From our first briefing in March of 09 until our last one in early December, ethnic media attendees also expressed a uniform anxiety over the lack of transparency in the decision making process of the Census ad buy,” Ms. Close said, adding that she has received correspondence from ethnic media outlets across the country not been utilized.
Moreover, there was also criticism that some of the communications vehicles chosen by the Census Bureau are not having the desired impact. She quoted Joe Orozco, of Hoopa Radio in northern California, lamenting that the Census spent the “the biggest chunk of money to reach American Indians” on billboards that don’t have much of an impact on isolated reservations like his. “Most of us don’t do a lot of freeway driving,” she quoted Mr. Orozco as saying.
Ms. Close said that hundreds of ethnic media like Hoopa Radio want to inform and mobilize their communities to participate in the Census. As the Census Bureau recognizes the regions with the lowest response rates, she recommended that the government fund a program similar to a NAM project launched to reach American Indian and indigenous communities in California.
The Save our Services campaign for Census 2010 replicates an approach that NAM has pioneered through numerous social marketing campaigns over the last decade. It relies upon local ethnic media outlets to design their own messaging campaigns and earned media components. Under this program, Hoopa Radio received a small grant of $2,000 that will help pay to develop a PSA that will grab listeners’ attention with a message that says: “If we don’t let ourselves be counted, they’ll say no one lives here and take away our water rights.”
Ms. Close cited reasons why the Census Bureau should utilize the ethnic media more. She noted that a survey by San Francisco State’s Renaissance Center last year found that 68 percent of ethnic media leaders described their primary goal as service to the community, with less than a third listing making a profit as their goal. In addition, she said that while mainstream media audiences have sharply declined, there has been a 16 percent growth in the ethnic media audiences over the last five years.
“Even a modest investment of $2 million in those outlets that have been left out or, like Joe Orozco, believe they have more effective ways to message to their audiences could increase the response rate dramatically in some regions between the crucial period between April 15 and the end of July,” Ms. Close said. “More important, it would acknowledge that not just the primary ethnic news outlets but the entire ethnic media sector has an indispensible role to play in how government communicates with the governed.”
October 20, 2009 at 7:50 pm · Filed under Covering the Census
You want to know why this time around the Census will do a better job and fewer persons will be missed. You want to know this because Cook County alone has lost an estimated $200 million in the last decade because of the undercount.
You want to know how well the Census is prepared to reach people who are not easily reachable: elderly, those with minimal or no English skills, those on society’s financial margins, and those frightened that their participation will mean their arrest or deportation.
And you want to know how the Census is spending the millions that the government has set aside to buy advertisements in the ethnic news media and in separate efforts to reach out to communities. You want to know how this money has been spent and has it been spent in the best ways possible. You want an accounting, up front and clear.
And you can ask all of these questions on Thursday meeting at a briefing for the Chicago area’s ethnic news media held by the U.S. Census with the support of New America Media. The meeting begins at 10:30 a.m. at the Hyatt Regency, 151 E. Wacker, downtown, Chicago and there will also be a lunch served afterward.
I’ll be there to listen and ask and I hope you will be to.
Stephen
August 23, 2009 at 11:39 am · Filed under Covering the Census
http://preview.tinyurl.com/kqtzbb
Say the government wants to give you some money. No strings attached. The only problem is the government has to know you exist. If you are not on its books, you don’t get the money.
It goes elsewhere. Even if you need it badly.
That is the simple reason why the Census is so important, why it is a tragedy that immigrant and minority communities have suffered by counts that passed over them and why the news media that serves immigrant and minority communities needs to tell this story.
It is also the reason why the ethnic news media has to be on top of this story not only explaining why the Census matters, but how the government is carrying out the Census. Oscar Avila, writing in the Chicago Tribune, again sums up good reasons why the ethnic news media needs to make the census a number one target for the next few months.
Who can’t use more money?
He writes:
“Nationwide, 65 percent of Hispanic residents and 60 percent of black residents returned census forms in 2000, compared with 78 percent of white residents, according to the General Accounting Office, ultimately leading to higher rates of being undercounted.
The consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers estimated that Cook County ultimately will lose about $200 million this decade because of undercounts in the 2000 census. Researchers estimated that Illinois will lose about $12,000 in federal funds over the next decade for each uncounted person.”
