As more Spanish-language news outlets shut their doors, Spanish-speaking residents have less access to journalism, diminishing resources that spark important local, global, and national conversations.
Spanish media is becoming obsolete as Spanish-language newspapers continue to be gutted. Earlier this month, The Dallas Morning News announced that its Spanish-language sister newspaper Al Día would close on March 1. The newspaper's team of five journalists will be reassigned to different teams in the newsroom. The trend of Spanish-speaking media closures signals the neglect of Spanish-speaking Latinx communities who rely on these outlets to learn about critical policies, programming, and resources in their community.
"In 2019, we worked with the Kinder Institute for Urban Research and Harris County, Texas, to invite the residents of the 33 cities to help us inform a 10-year housing plan. This plan, called My Home is Here, was a rigorous, first-of-its-kind approach to understanding what residents need," said Maya Ford, Principal and founder of FordMomentum!."However, before we could develop this strategy that informed the nuances of what and how we needed to create safe spaces for intentional communication. We translated our outreach into Spanish, ensuring we used local colloquialisms to ensure authenticity, and worked directly with the people, going right to them. With an incredibly diverse area, we needed to dive into the Spanish community to understand what abuelas might need versus young children and account for these differences."
Click on the link to listen to a brief interview about the decline of Spanish-language news outlets.