Ethnic Outlets Survive In Sinking Media Market

I heard this story on NPR’s “Morning Edition” and was fascinated to learn that ethnic media outlets are still thriving while their mainstream counterparts are quickly dying. Major newspapers like Denver’s Rocky Mountain News are being forced to shut down their print publications entirely, and as of earlier this month, the company that owns both The Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. As a journalist, it has been hard to sit here and contemplate the rapidly shrinking news industry. But this NPR story, which you can read at the included link or listen to at http://www.npr.org/...story.php?storyId=102802880, shows a glimmer of hope: ethnic media are not only surviving, but in some cases expanding. And among all these thriving ethnic media, one common thread seems to be keeping them afloat: they not only draw huge immigrant audiences, but the children and grandchildren of immigrants are also tuning in. The story focuses on the growing popularity of Spanish-language media in Los Angeles. But I would venture to guess that if ethnic media is booming in our nation’s No. 1 most immigrant populated city, it is also booming here in our country’s third most immigrant populated city of Chicago. The NPR story highlights a local L.A. Spanish-language TV station that beat out all the networks as the city’s most-watched channel; a large Asian TV station that is expanding instead of shrinking; the city’s biggest Spanish language daily newspaper that has half a million readers; and a Latino radio station that broadcasts in “Spanglish.”