CHANGING TIMES

November 2002
		How will the growth of minority communities influence the way media outlets operate? Sandy Close, the executive director of New California Media, an non-profit association representing more than 400 ethnic media organizations, answers your questions.

Forum Introduction Do non-English language newspapers translate the stories of English newspapers? How do Spanish-language newspapers identify their audience (as Latino or Hispanic)? How do ethnic media assist, or impede, the assimilation of immigrants into the greater "American culture"?   Online Special: California's Changing Audience Other Media Reports: MediaWatch Merging Media Browse the NewsHour's coverage of the media	Melvin Ross, from Pennsylvania asks: What does Hispanic mean? Is there a difference between Hispanic and Latino? Are people from Spain included in this category? How do Spanish-language newspapers identify their audience (as Latino or Hispanic)? And, how do the Spanish-language media target people from the highly diverse Latin American countries (i.e., Mexico and Argentina)? Sandy Close responds: Dear Mr. Ross, We simply don't have the vocabulary that keeps pace with the demographic changes happening and what they mean. The term "ethnic" is almost as unpopular among many ethnic communities as the term "Hispanic" is among some Latinos because it's seen as marginalizing the people it denotes. Very broadly speaking, "Hispanic" refers to people in the U.S. who came originally from Spanish-speaking countries (including Spain); "Latino" refers to people originally from Latin America. But the network of journalists who identify as Latino or Hispanic call themselves the National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ), and similarly Hispanic publishers have organized an association that uses the term Hispanic to encompass media that serves Central Americans, Mexicans, even Brazilian communities. Yet some newspapers, like La Opinion, editorially prefer the term "Latino" to "Hispanic" when describing their audience. On the Univision Web site both terms are used. I would also add that in terms of targeting the diversity of Latin American communities in the United States, Hispanic radio, television and newspapers have an advantage in targeting and catering to them because although the largest population groups in U.S. still are Mexican, Puerto Rican and Cuban -- Hispanic media newsrooms tend to be much more diverse than the general Hispanic population, commonly including people from South American nations such as Colombia, Venezuela, Chile and Argentina as well as Mexicans, Central Americans and Caribbean people. This is also true in programming. Telemundo uses a lot of Brazilian (dubbed), Peruvian and Colombian content. Univision uses mostly Mexican shows, but has also signed deals with Venezuelan and Colombian programming outlets. The larger Hispanic newspapers also do a good job of presenting news from a wide array of Latin American countries. Much has been written on this question of Hispanic versus Latino. Rudy Acuna (acuna@csun.edu), for example, could refer you to scholarly studies including his own. The News Hour's essayist Richard Rodriguez has also addressed this topic for both the News Hour and Pacific News Service (richrod@mindspring.com). You may also want to look at a pretty comprehensive new poll done for People en Espaņol by Cheskin Research called Hispanic Opinion Tracker, which among other findings said that 67 percent of those Latinos/Hispanics surveyed preferred the term "Hispanic" to the term "Latino."