Press Forward Invests in Latino Media Consortium — A Major Boost for Latino Newsrooms
The Latino Media Consortium (LMC) is deeply proud to be a recipient of a transformational infrastructure grant from Press Forward, a national philanthropic initiative dedicated to revitalizing local news. LMC is one of just 22 organizations selected for funding in Press Forward’s most recent Open Call. For us, this investment is more than a financial milestone - it’s a vote of confidence that Latino‑focused newsrooms belong at the center of America’s information future.
Illustration by Sayuri Jimenez
By Lucy Flores • July 16, 2025
The Latino Media Consortium (LMC) is deeply proud to be a recipient of a $750,000 infrastructure grant from Press Forward, a national philanthropic initiative dedicated to revitalizing local news. LMC is one of just 22 organizations funded in Press Forward’s most recent Open Call, a $22.7 million commitment designed to strengthen the backbone of the news ecosystem nationwide. For us, this investment is more than a financial milestone - it’s a vote of confidence that Latino‑focused newsrooms belong at the center of America’s information future.
Why We Launched and Why It Matters
LMC officially launched as a member-serving organization in September 2024 with a singular mission: to build a robust, well-resourced Latino media ecosystem, so every Latino in the United States can access trustworthy, culturally competent news and fully participate in American life and democracy. Despite representing more than 65 million people, Latino‑owned and Latino‑serving outlets remain chronically under‑funded, leaving essential stories untold and widening information gaps in communities that need accurate reporting the most. By directing capital, mentorship, coaching, and shared services to the publishers that know our communities best, LMC aims to change that trajectory.
Early Believers Who Lit the Spark
Our initial progress was made possible by partners who recognized the urgency of this work long before our public launch. The Valiente Fund provided seed funding, enabling us to build the necessary infrastructure and strategy to pursue our ambitious yet essential goals.
Maria Rodriguez, former Executive Director of the Valiente Fund, explained why she chose to invest early in the LMC. She said,
“Investing in media infrastructure is key to shaping the consciousness and power of diverse Latine communities. It’s a no-brainer to support visionary leaders who are collaborating and synergizing in defense of an informed and engaged citizenry. Without a diverse multimedia ecosystem, Latino communities struggle to find trusted news and information. Consequently, they are often vulnerable to relentless algorithms that thrive on confusion and doubt, making them targets for bad actors spreading disinformation. It’s encouraging to see that Press Forward, a collective of philanthropic leaders, is making bold new investments in innovative and new solutions, recognizing that “the way it’s always been done” by those who have always done it hasn’t resulted in the progress that was promised.”
Shortly thereafter, the Latino Community Foundation (LCF) provided additional catalytic planning grants, which transformed LMC from an idea into a sustained, operational plan.
“Keeping the Latino community well informed through trustworthy, fact-based digital outlets has never been more important than now, as the community faces threats and challenges on several fronts. The Latino Media Consortium’s work is critical to meeting this moment. Kudos to Press Forward for supporting their efforts,” said Julián Castro, CEO of the Latino Community Foundation.
Their early confidence laid the groundwork that Press Forward is now building upon.
What the Press Forward Grant Will Fuel for the Road Ahead
Press Forward’s investment will enable us to deepen and scale our work over the next two years. It will underwrite direct sustainability grants for Latino-serving publishers—whether for-profit, nonprofit, English, Spanish, or bilingual—and establish our one-on-one consulting program in business strategy, revenue development, and audience growth. Just as important, the grant will support the development of shared services and data tools that reduce operating costs, allowing newsrooms to focus on the reporting that matters most to their communities.
While this award is a significant milestone, it isn’t the finish line by any means. Building a truly equitable Latino media ecosystem will require sustained collaboration among funders, innovators, publishers, and, most importantly, the communities we serve. We invite allies, both old and new, to join us in ensuring that no Latino in the United States is left in the dark.
About the Latino Media Consortium
The Latino Media Consortium is a network of Latino‑owned and Latino‑serving digital publishers working together to secure equitable investment for culturally competent news. Our five‑year goal is to raise and distribute $100 million to fortify Latino media nationwide. Learn more at wearelatinomedia.org.
The Latino Media Consortium is funded by Press Forward, a national initiative to reimagine local news. Learn more at pressforward.news.
Reaching 65 Million: The Bold New Model Making Latino News Accessible, Relevant, and Sustainable
Today, we are proud to announce a first-of-its-kind Latino Media Content Hub, which will deliver curated Latino-specific news and information from and through participating Latino independent media outlets.
Illustration by Sayuri Jimenez
By Lucy Flores • April 15, 2025
The nation's 65 million Latinos need relevant news and information they trust. But our current media landscape is failing them - that's why we founded the Latino Media Consortium in 2024. We're working to facilitate the sustainable growth of the Latino media ecosystem to transform how our communities access vital information.
Today, we are proud to announce a meaningful step in accomplishing that goal - a first-of-its-kind Latino Media Content Hub, which will deliver curated Latino-specific news and information from and through participating Latino independent media outlets. To meet this critical moment when Latino communities are under attack, we are launching the Latino Media Content Hub with an immigration-specific feed, "Immigration in the U.S.," to deliver breaking news, thoughtful analysis, and vital information as it’s happening and when it’s needed.
The Digital Divide and Misalignment in Latino Media
For years, engaging Latino audiences has presented unique challenges for news distributors and content creators. Despite being the largest demographic of color in the U.S., with projected growth from the current 65 million to 72 million by 2030, Latinos remain largely invisible in the American media landscape. According to the only comprehensive Latino media survey conducted in the last decade, from 2019, 65 million Latinos in the U.S. and Puerto Rico are served by just 624 media operators. Most of these operators rely on outdated print and broadcast models, lack dedicated newsroom staff, or do not produce original content at all. The result is a fragmented media landscape that fails to adequately reach Latino audiences.
The insufficient existence of independent Latino media outlets, coupled with the mismatch in distribution and consumption preferences, explains the historical difficulty in effectively reaching Latinos in the U.S. Media must not only be available on platforms preferred by Latinos but also create news and information content in their preferred languages and in culturally relevant ways. A recent Pew survey of individuals identifying as Latino or Hispanic reported that nearly nine-in-ten (87%) stated they get their news from digital devices at least sometimes, and 65% indicated a preference for digital platforms over TV, radio, or print. The survey further revealed that 54% of respondents mainly consume news in English, 21% prefer Spanish, while another quarter report consuming news almost equally in both languages.
With so much nuance in both Latino culture and news consumption preferences, it’s easy to recognize the challenges in creating a U.S. media ecosystem that effectively serves Latino audiences. Traditional approaches to addressing this issue require substantial resources and many years of development. For instance, there are nearly 800 cities in the U.S. with at least 50,000 residents. It would take an untold amount of money and time to equip legacy media, establish new local media, and expand existing digital media to serve all 800 cities, let alone reach all 65 million Latinos throughout the U.S.
This means that solutions for addressing this crisis must be multifaceted, innovative, and highly efficient. The solutions have to be “and and” - they cannot include any or’s. It’s not about English versus Spanish, digital versus radio, or local versus national. It encompasses all of the above. This is the only way to shift the media landscape given the limited resources available and the urgency of the problem.
Crisis is Where the Solutions Are: An Innovative Distribution Model
The vast majority of existing independent digital media outlets are small, but their combined audience reach is significant, engaging millions of people. This creates a major efficiency barrier for organizations, individuals, or brands seeking to connect with Latino audiences, especially when they lack the time, expertise, or capacity to engage with the numerous Latino media outlets needed to reach their target audience.
In partnership with the Distributed Media Lab (DML), we created the Latino Media Content Hub, a distributed media technology that enables us to deliver Latino news and media content through participating media outlets. Unlike traditional networks that often rely on a single destination site to distribute their content, the Latino Media Content Hub employs a distributed model where content flows across multiple publisher websites simultaneously. Given the numerous challenges in reaching Latino audiences, we focused on developing an easy and effective solution that facilitates efficient, automated content distribution from a single distribution source.
As such, the Latino Media Content Hub also helps address digital outlets’s struggle to diversify their revenue beyond traditional advertising, philanthropic contributions, or reader-supported revenue streams. The Hub addresses this problem by providing additional revenue for media publishers and distributors through content and syndication fees. In return for the outlet’s content, valuable digital real estate, and/or audience reach, the Hub ensures that independent news producers are compensated for their work, platform, and product.
Addressing Fragmentation Through Technology
By sourcing content from multiple publishers and displaying it across numerous websites simultaneously, the Latino Media Content Hub creates a networked information ecosystem that's greater than the sum of its parts. The Hub enables essential stories, information, commentary, and thought leadership on health, immigration, climate change, and other critical issues to reach Latino audiences, regardless of which specific news sources they follow. This functionality is especially important during crucial moments, such as natural disasters, when the timely delivery of information is vital.
This approach enables instant access to potentially millions of Latinos without necessitating immediate large-scale infrastructure investments or lengthy development periods. The system can be customized to reach specific segments of the Latino community based on interests, language preferences, cultural factors, or geographic location.
Early Success, Future Potential, and a Model for Sustainable Latino Media
This pilot combines LMC’s unique expertise and strong connections within the Latino independent digital media ecosystem with DML’s innovative technology, enabling the distribution of essential news and information across LMC’s inaugural member publishers. This initial pilot builds on the success of DML’s 2024 pilot, the "California News hub," which appears on dozens of local media sites across California and generates millions of monthly viewable impressions.
Through a partnership with URL Media, funded by Knight Foundation, the Latino Media Content Hub’s newly established “Immigration in the U.S.” feed will provide timely, informative, and essential immigration-related news through Conecta Arizona, El Tecolote, Enlace Latino NC, Luz Media, Pulso, and The Latino Newsletter. This member-produced editorial coverage will reach audiences throughout California, Arizona, Texas, Puerto Rico, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Florida, New York, Illinois, and beyond.
What makes this approach particularly significant is how it creates value for all participants. For audiences, it increases access to quality information. For publishers, it provides both content and a new revenue stream. For brands and organizations looking to reach Latino audiences, it offers an efficient pathway to engagement.
As this initiative expands beyond its immigration-focused pilot, it represents a crucial step toward ensuring that Latino communities have reliable access to the information they need, delivered in the languages and formats they prefer through the digital channels they already use. The newly created Latino Media Content Hub represents a transformative approach to content distribution that could reshape how Latino communities access vital information now and in the future.
In a media landscape where sustainability remains a persistent challenge, the Latino Media Content Hub demonstrates how innovative distribution models can support quality journalism while better serving previously underserved communities.
‘Never to take the first no for an answer’
Key takeaways from our virtual legal briefing for newsrooms covering the rapidly shifting immigration landscape.
On March 25, the Latino Media Consortium partnered with URL Media and Tiny News Collective to host a virtual legal briefing with media attorney Erin Victoria of Caplan Cobb to explore strategies for covering the rapidly shifting immigration landscape. The following is a recap of Victoria’s key recommendations.
As expected, President Trump has made immigration central to his efforts to consolidate executive power, following an inaugural pledge to deport “millions and millions of criminal aliens” with a barrage of executive orders, detentions and deportations that have put millions of Americans on edge.
Following the sheer volume of executive actions has been challenging enough; but the administration’s increased attacks on press freedom have made newsgathering particularly difficult for news organizations serving immigrant communities.
“We have never seen the level of outright hostility against the media as we see with Trump,” Victoria said.
How can publishers effectively report on this issue while also protecting sources and their own journalists? Victoria, who has extensive experience advising media clients and litigating First Amendment issues, offered several recommendations for publishers aiming to bolster their newsgathering efforts in the Trump era.
‘Never to take the first no for an answer’
Victoria encouraged publishers to utilize the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to pursue records on detainees and enforcement actions from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Executive Office for Immigration Review.
But the vast majority of people detained by ICE end up in for-profit detention facilities that are not subject to FOIA. When reporting on private detention centers, Victoria suggested seeking records from the DHS Office of Inspector General, which inspects these facilities.
And while FOIA can be a powerful tool for holding the government accountable, Victoria said journalists should be prepared to push back when their requests are denied.
“Never take the first no for an answer,” she said. “Think about ways to fight back, potentially consult with legal counsel because a lot of times in my experience…sometimes all it takes is a strongly worded letter.”
Journalists can also gain insight into immigration enforcement by requesting records (such as financial records, internal policies, detention data and federal contracts) from state and local agencies cooperating with ICE.
Finally, immigration hearings are another avenue generally open to journalists, though judges have discretion to close proceedings. Victoria advised journalists to consult DOJ guidelines to confirm access ahead of court hearings.
Resources
Detainee access: ICE media guidelines and visiting hour lookup
Court access: DOJ’s Immigration Court Practice Manual
Immigration & deportation records tipsheet (Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press); In Spanish
Using your state’s open records laws for immigration (Immigrant Legal Resource Center)
Protecting vulnerable sources
Source confidentiality is a top concern for journalists reporting on undocumented immigrants, and Victoria emphasized the importance of knowing how shield laws apply to newsgathering.
While there is no federal shield law, most states (besides Wyoming) have laws establishing “reporter’s privilege,” affording journalists the right to resist the forced disclosure of confidential sources or materials.
Shield laws establish what information is privileged but also who is considered a journalist. For instance, some states extend protections only to reporters affiliated with traditional print or broadcast outlets.
“The laws vary pretty widely from state to state,” Victoria said. “You need to know as a journalist that you can protect these sources and offer them a certain degree of protection.”
In addition to understanding state-specific protections (outlined here by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press), Victoria offered a few suggestions for reporting and record keeping, including:
Using separate devices and encrypted apps to communicate with vulnerable sources
Limiting written communications with confidential sources
Anonymizing identifying details in photos and videos, including faces, tattoos, and other potential identifiers
Mitigating legal risks
Victoria emphasized the heightened legal risks for media organizations in the current political climate. “Things are different right now,” Victoria cautioned. “We have never seen just the level of outright hostility against the media, specifically our mainstream legacy media, as we see with Trump.”
The key to mitigating against defamation claims or other enforcement actions, Victoria said, is establishing editorial frameworks, legal resources and liability insurance before a legal challenge is mounted. Newsrooms should make plans for:
Conducting thorough fact-checking and pre-publication review
Obtaining robust libel and slander insurance coverage
Being familiar with anti-SLAPP laws by state
While there are no federal protections against “strategic lawsuits against public participation” — or SLAPP lawsuits — 35 states offer some level of protection against frivolous lawsuits aimed at chilling free speech. Those include: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington.
On insurance, Victoria noted how coverage of private detention facilities could draw increased legal exposure than coverage of government facilities. “The individuals that run that detention facility are more likely to be private individuals than public figures,” she said, making it easier for them to pursue a defamation lawsuit.
On pre-publication review, Victoria recommended publishers take advantage of pro bono support to “identify and mitigate potential legal issues before they become problems.” But she also urged newsrooms to budget for legal support, if possible.
“In terms of being prepped and ready for potential litigation or enforcement action, you're less likely to be able to find pro bono support for that,” she said.
Resources:
The Latino Media Consortium is ‘community-first’ — here’s what that means, and why it matters
In the weeks since we launched the Latino Media Consortium, many have asked about our members — what types of media organizations do we support, and how did we choose them?
Our inaugural class of LMC media operators include three local media organizations (Conecta Arizona, a Spanish-language, cross-border news service based in Phoenix, Arizona; El Tecolote, a nonprofit newsroom serving Latinx San Franciscans with bilingual, grassroots journalism; and Enlace Latino NC, a Spanish-language news outlet serving North Carolina’s Latino immigrant communities) and five national organizations (LatinaMediaCo, which centers Latina and queer Latinx voices in media and cultural criticism; Luz Media, which challenges harmful and inaccurate media narratives about U.S. Latinas; Pulso, a nonprofit media startup covering news, history, and culture for Latinos; NAHJ’s palabra, a multimedia platform developing and elevating in-depth journalism by freelance Latino journalists; and The Latino Newsletter, a startup nonprofit reporting on politics through a Latino lens).
While we are eager to grow the Latino Media Consortium, we are beginning with this particular mix of organizations to demonstrate the breadth of our community’s information needs and the impact that transformational investment can have when accompanied by adaptive capacity-building and support.
As we noted when we launched, our inaugural cohort serves “national and local audiences, immigrants and U.S.-born; they are nonprofit and for-profit and serve Latinos in their preferred languages of English, Spanish, or both. They report on issues fundamental to Latino lives — health care, child care, education, labor issues, government systems, and more — as well as the food, film, music, and culture that tie our communities together.”
The keyword here being community. Most of the conversations about revitalizing news right now are happening at the local level — and for good reason. Even as research indicates greater trust in local news, our industry seems to be losing a war of attrition at the local level, with more than 2 newspapers shuttering every week — a pace that will reduce the total newspaper market by a third from its size in 2005.
But this decline doesn’t begin to account for the lack of Latino media outlets, which are not fully captured in national studies on racial and ethnic media. Nor does it capture the persistent dearth of Latino representation in news and media, or the relationship between representation and trust among Latinos (despite international studies linking the two).
The Latino Media Consortium is prioritizing community-first media because we understand that Latinos’ information needs are as varied and diverse as we are. Those needs aren’t limited to geographical boundaries, and shared cultural values often encompass large swaths of regions or the entire nation itself. Our interests and consumption habits are often tied to age, language preference, and time spent in the United States, among other factors, and because Latinos aren’t a monolith, all 64 million of those Latinos live in every town, city, county, and state in the U.S.
By taking a community-first approach, we are working to build a media ecosystem that reflects the range of lived experiences and everyday information needs of Latinos, at both the national and local levels, whether immigrant consumers need help navigating local schools in Spanish or third-generation Americans are seeking to learn more about their Latino roots and heritage in English.
We’re proud of the work our inaugural cohort is doing to meet Latino readers wherever they are, and grateful to our partners at the Valiente Fund and the Latino Community Foundation who see the importance of a Latino media ecosystem that reflects the richness and diversity of our community.
To learn more about our capacity-building and fundraising goals, check out our deck and reach out to info@wearelatinomedia.org to set up a call. We’d love to partner with you to support community-first media for Latinos at the national and local levels.
Invisible Yet Essential: The Urgent Call to Invest in Latino Media
Illustration by Sayuri Jimenez
Early morning, March 26, 2024. While most Baltimoreans were resting, thousands of others worked night shifts to keep the societal wheels turning for their neighbors.
Seven of those workers —all Latinos— were on the Francis Scott Key Bridge, making repairs that are often taken for granted by the over 31,000 drivers who cross it daily, when tragedy struck.
A container ship, the Dali, lost power, veered off course, and crashed into the bridge, causing it to collapse. All seven passengers were sent into the icy waters below. Only one survived.
Thanks to the diligence of local and national news outlets, we know initial calls to alert authorities that the Dali was drifting out of control potentially saved hundreds, if not thousands, of lives. We also know that as officials worked to stop bridge traffic in those crucial moments, they also discussed next steps over radio chatter, including alerting any work crews to leave the bridge.
Bridge personnel halted traffic but didn’t evacuate seven bridge workers — why?
The answer is unclear because while most media reported on the collapse’s economic impact and efforts to reopen, too few asked relevant questions about the largest tragedy of them all: the six people who lost their lives that day. They left behind children, spouses, and families dependent on their wages, yet commerce and bridge infrastructure dominated headlines.
The six workers who died, all from Latin American countries, were doing everyday jobs often overlooked and, for Latinos, disproportionately more dangerous. Where was the reporting about the lack of life-saving communication to these workers?
We can discern from past patterns that the lives of non-white Americans are portrayed differently than their white counterparts. When white women go missing, headlines blare. By contrast, according to a 2016 analysis by the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, only about 1 in 5 missing person cases involving people of color are covered by the news media. When farm workers are caught in insidious climate catastrophes, their plights are rarely reported.
When seven bridge workers plunge into the cold and murky depths of the Patapsco River, too few ask why.
Latino media in crisis
As another critical presidential election nears, there’s plenty of hand-wringing around the growing U.S. news crisis. And rightly so. At a time when Americans need and deserve relevant, trustworthy information the most, newsrooms continue to reel from closures (2.5 newsrooms shutting down each week, on average), layoffs (nearly 2,400 already this year), consumer mistrust (39% of Americans have zero confidence in U.S. media), and plummeting revenues (down more than 50% since 2005).
For independent Latino media, however, the hand-wringing is all too familiar. There has never been a time when Latino media wasn’t in crisis. When U.S. newsrooms were rolling in multimillion-dollar investments and acquisitions, Latino media outlets were living hand-to-mouth while doing their absolute best to keep 64 million U.S. Latinos informed and accurately represented in media narratives.
To the uninformed, the combination of false stereotypes (‘all Latinos speak and prefer their news in Spanish”) and the outsized influence of multibillion-dollar media behemoths (Univision and Telemundo) might make it easy to believe that U.S. Latinos are well served.
There is nothing further from the truth.
To be clear, Latinos prefer consuming information in English, Spanish, and bilingually. Latinos aren’t a monolith in race, culture, or language. Many speak only English (31%), many speak only Spanish (an estimated 19%), and most speak both (75%), and to add further nuance, fluency or language dominance doesn’t pre-determine preference.
By one count, the nation’s 64 million Latinos are informed by just 558 media operators — a generous estimate when you consider that most of them publish through outdated print and broadcast models, have no dedicated newsroom staff, or don’t produce original content at all. If Puerto Rico is included, that number goes up to 624. While much attention is paid to the disappearance of local news, Latino media ends up lost among “ethnic outlets that fly below the radar and receive scant attention beyond the communities they serve,” per the authors of the “State of Local News 2023.” As a result, researchers opt to skip these outlets and promise to “delve more deeply” in future reports with no determined publication dates.
It’s difficult to know exactly how many Latino media operators exist and who they reach today because the last known deep dive media landscape study was done in 2019 by the Newmark Journalism School at CUNY — a year before the global pandemic accelerated the demise of newsrooms and media platforms across the country. (The CUNY team is preparing an update this fall.)
We don’t have a recent survey of how many Latino journalists are out of work, either, but we do know that even in places like Los Angeles County, where 49% of the population is Latino, the Los Angeles Times didn’t hesitate to pad its profit margin with a chopping block layered thick with Latino and other diverse journalists.
When Aquí, the national civil rights organization, wrote a letter to the Los Angeles Times asking for the reasoning behind gutting their Latino staff, leadership didn’t even bother to respond.
Is it any wonder then, why Latinos are so misunderstood, disenfranchised, and hard to reach?
Latinos generate $3.2 trillion dollars in GDP; if Latinos were a country, they’d have the fifth-largest economy in the world. They start businesses at a higher rate than any other group. They spend more time than anyone else streaming music, film, and entertainment, contributing an estimated $2.9 billion in box office receipts per year. They also dominate service jobs.
In recent years, nearly 1.2 million Americans lost their lives to a terrifying new virus, yet service workers, dubbed “essential workers” were asked to keep working to the benefit of everyone else. According to a Pew Research Center survey, 45% of Hispanic adults worked at jobs requiring them to work outside their homes during the worst of the pandemic. Latinos did what was needed for their families, their communities, and their country.
Yet when it came time to protect themselves with a vaccine, Latino and Black Americans were the least likely to get them compared to their white counterparts. Research has attributed these lower vaccination rates to various causes, such as exposure to misinformation, mistrust in the U.S. healthcare system due to historical injustices, uncertainty about eligibility, and discrepancies in the availability and distribution of vaccines.
Disinformation took root before fact-based information ever could. The truth never stood a chance. How many lives were lost because mainstream media didn’t know how to, or simply didn't bother prioritizing this community? How many lives could have been saved if more than 500 mostly small and underfunded outlets existed to reach 64 million people?
Introducing the Latino Media Consortium
By 2030, the Latino population will swell to 72 million. Latinos are integral to our culture, economy, and the American story, and yet, they remain practically invisible in the American media landscape.
As many philanthropic foundations, organized and inspired by the Press Forward movement, are mobilizing to inject at least $500 million into local news to attempt to save American media, we applaud the much-needed and exemplary commitment that the coalition of Press Forward funders have made through their individually aligned and Press Forward grant-making processes.
The utter dire state of Latino media, however, has made it increasingly clear that we need to highlight just how necessary it is to invest equitably in Latino media infrastructure. Nine Latino media operators — led by Lucy Flores, co-founder of Luz Media, and Amanda Zamora, co-founder of the 19th News and founder of Agencia Media, and supported by the Valiente Fund and the Latino Community Foundation — launched the Latino Media Consortium to pursue this goal.
Collectively, Latino Media Consortium publishers serve national and local audiences, immigrants and U.S.-born; they are nonprofit and for-profit and serve Latinos in their preferred languages of English, Spanish, or both. They report on issues fundamental to Latino lives —health care, child care, education, labor issues, government systems, and more— as well as the food, film, music, and culture that tie our communities together.
And they are growing. Latino Media Consortium publishers collectively grew their digital U.S. reach by 48% in the last year. Together, they serve more than 1.4 million people — nearly 4% of the Latino digital news market — across websites, social media, WhatsApp, events, broadcast, and podcasts. With comparatively scant budgets and under-resourced newsrooms, these Latino media operators are growing because they have the trust of Latino audiences that mainstream media doesn’t.
And they deserve transformative investment.
Latinos continue to give to this country, rarely asking for anything in return other than what they earned. But we are asking now, on behalf of the nation’s 64 million Latinos, for equitable investment in an imperative that’s necessary in order to preserve a free and functioning democracy. Record numbers of Latinos become eligible to vote every year, and every single year, we see record Latino voter turnout in elections across the country. To continue to allow such a vital constituency to remain woefully uninformed, vulnerable, and confused is immoral at worst and democratic malpractice at best.
Over the next five years, the Consortium aims to raise and distribute $100 million in transformative grants for an entire ecosystem of publishers serving digital-first, Latino audiences. We are putting journalists back to work; producing news, information, and culturally relevant content; and capacity building such as grant-writing, business development, operations, and product development. A robust investment in the entire ecosystem is crucial to helping these news and media organizations scale and sustain their operations for the long term.
This country and this community need and deserve nothing less.
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Join us: Contact info@wearelatinomedia.org for more information, download our deck and sign up to get occasional consortium updates delivered to your inbox.
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The members of the Latino Media Consortium are:
Invisible Pero Esencial: El Llamado Urgente a Invertir en Medios Latinos
Durante los próximos cinco años, el Latino Media Consortium se propone recaudar y distribuir 100 millones de dólares en subvenciones transformadoras para un ecosistema completo de medios que atienden a audiencias Latinas en el entorno digital.
Illustration by Sayuri Jimenez
Madrugada del 26 de marzo de 2024. Mientras la mayoría de los habitantes de Baltimore descansaban, miles de otros trabajaban en turnos nocturnos para que la sociedad siguiera funcionando para sus vecinos.
Siete de esos trabajadores —todos Latinos— estaban en el puente Francis Scott Key, realizando reparaciones que a menudo pasan desapercibidas por los más de 31,000 conductores que lo cruzan a diario, cuando ocurrió la tragedia.
Un buque portacontenedores, el Dali, perdió potencia, desvió su rumbo y chocó contra el puente, provocando su colapso. Los siete trabajadores cayeron en gélidas aguas de abajo.. Solo uno sobrevivió.
Gracias a la diligencia de los medios de comunicación locales y nacionales, sabemos que las llamadas iniciales para alertar a las autoridades de que el Dali estaba fuera de control salvaron potencialmente cientos, si no miles, de vidas. También sabemos que, mientras los oficiales trabajaban para detener el tráfico en el puente en esos momentos cruciales, discutían los siguientes pasos por radio, incluyendo alertar a cualquier equipo de trabajo para que abandonara el puente.
El personal del puente detuvo el tráfico, pero no evacuó a los siete trabajadores del puente — ¿por qué?
La respuesta no está clara porque, aunque la mayoría de los medios informaron sobre el impacto económico del colapso y los esfuerzos para reabrir el puente, muy pocos hicieron las preguntas relevantes sobre la mayor tragedia de todas: las seis personas que perdieron la vida ese día. Dejaron atrás hijos, cónyuges y familias que dependían de sus salarios, pero el comercio y la infraestructura del puente dominaron los titulares.
Los seis trabajadores que murieron, todos ellos de países Latinoamericanos, realizaban trabajos cotidianos que a menudo pasan desapercibidos y que, para los Latinos, son desproporcionadamente más peligrosos. ¿Dónde estaban los reportajes sobre la falta de comunicación que pudo haber salvado sus vidas?
Podemos discernir, a partir de patrones anteriores, que las vidas de los Estadounidenses no-blancos se retratan de manera diferente a las de sus contrapartes blancas. Cuando desaparecen mujeres blancas, los titulares son estruendosos. En cambio, según un análisis de 2016 del Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, solo 1 de cada 5 casos de personas desaparecidas que involucran a personas de color reciben cobertura en los medios de comunicación. Cuando los trabajadores agrícolas quedan atrapados en catastróficas crisis climáticas, sus sufrimientos rara vez son reportados.
Cuando siete trabajadores de un puente caen en las frías y turbias profundidades del río Patapsco, muy pocos se preguntan por qué.
Los Medios Latinos en Crisis
A medida que se acerca otra elección presidencial crítica, hay mucha preocupación en torno a la creciente crisis de noticias en Estados Unidos. Y con razón. En un momento en que los Estadounidenses necesitan y merecen más que nadie información relevante y confiable, las redacciones siguen tambaleándose por los cierres (un promedio de 2.5 redacciones cierran cada semana), los despidos (casi 2,400 solo este año), la desconfianza de los consumidores (el 39% de los Estadounidenses no tiene ninguna confianza en los medios de EE. UU.) y la caída de los ingresos (más del 50% desde 2005).
Sin embargo, para los medios Latinos independientes, esta preocupación es demasiado familiar. Nunca ha habido un momento en que los medios Latinos no estuvieran en crisis. Cuando las salas de prensa de EE. UU. recibían inversiones multimillonarias y adquisiciones, los medios Latinos sobrevivían con lo justo, haciendo su mayor esfuerzo por mantener informados a los 64 millones de Latinos en EE. UU. y asegurarse de que fueran representados de manera precisa en las narrativas mediáticas.
Para quienes no están informados, la combinación de estereotipos falsos ("todos los Latinos hablan y prefieren recibir sus noticias en español") y la desproporcionada influencia de los gigantes mediáticos multimillonarios (Univision y Telemundo) podría hacerles creer que los Latinos en EE. UU. están bien atendidos. Nada más alejado de la realidad.
Para ser claros, los Latinos prefieren consumir información en Inglés, en Español y de forma bilingüe. Los Latinos no son un monolito en cuanto a raza, cultura o idioma. Muchos solo hablan inglés (31%), muchos solo hablan español (un estimado 19%) y la mayoría habla ambos idiomas (75%). Además, para agregar más matices, la fluidez o el dominio de un idioma no determinan necesariamente la preferencia.
Según un recuento, los 64 millones de Latinos en el país son informados por solo 558 operadores de medios, una estimación generosa si se considera que la mayoría publica a través de modelos obsoletos de impresión y transmisión, no tienen personal dedicado en la redacción o no producen contenido original en absoluto. Si se incluye a Puerto Rico, ese número sube a 624. Aunque se presta mucha atención a la desaparición de las noticias locales, los medios Latinos terminan perdidos entre "los medios étnicos que pasan desapercibidos y reciben poca atención fuera de las comunidades a las que sirven", según los autores del informe "State of Local News 2023". Como resultado, los investigadores optan por omitir estos medios y prometen "profundizar más" en futuros informes, sin fechas de publicación determinadas.
Es difícil saber exactamente cuántos operadores de medios Latinos existen y a cuántas personas alcanzan hoy en día, porque el último estudio exhaustivo sobre el panorama mediático fue realizado en 2019 por el Escuela de Periodismo de Newmark en CUNY, un año antes de que la pandemia global acelerara la desaparición de salas de prensa y plataformas de medios en todo el país.
Tampoco tenemos una encuesta reciente sobre cuántos periodistas Latinos están desempleados, pero sí sabemos que incluso en lugares como el condado de Los Ángeles, donde el 49% de la población es Latina, Los Angeles Times no dudó en engordar su margen de ganancias con una lista de despidos que afectó en gran medida a periodistas Latinos y de otras minorías.
Cuando Aquí, la organización nacional de derechos civiles, envió una carta al Los Angeles Times pidiendo una explicación sobre la eliminación de su personal Latino, los directivos ni siquiera se molestaron en responder.
¿Es de extrañar, entonces, que los Latinos sean tan incomprendidos, marginados y difíciles de alcanzar?
Los Latinos generan 3.2 billones de dólares en PIB; si fueran un país, tendrían la quinta economía más grande del mundo. Crean empresas a un ritmo más alto que cualquier otro grupo. Pasan más tiempo que nadie transmitiendo música, películas y entretenimiento, contribuyendo con un estimado de 2.9 mil millones de dólares en ingresos de taquilla por año.
También dominan los trabajos de servicio.
En los últimos años, casi 1.2 millones de Estadounidenses perdieron la vida a causa de un nuevo y aterrador virus, sin embargo, se pidió a los trabajadores de servicios, denominados "trabajadores esenciales", que siguieran trabajando para el beneficio de todos los demás. Según una encuesta del Pew Research Center, el 45% de los adultos Hispanos trabajaron en empleos que requerían que trabajaran fuera de sus hogares durante lo peor de la pandemia. Los Latinos hicieron lo que era necesario para sus familias, sus comunidades y su país.
Sin embargo, cuando llegó el momento de protegerse con la vacuna, los Latinos y Afroamericanos fueron los menos propensos a recibirla en comparación con sus contrapartes blancas. Las investigaciones han atribuido estas tasas más bajas de vacunación a diversas causas, como la exposición a la desinformación, la desconfianza en el sistema de salud de EE. UU. debido a injusticias históricas, la incertidumbre sobre la elegibilidad y las discrepancias en la disponibilidad y distribución de las vacunas.
La desinformación echó raíces antes de que la información basada en hechos pudiera hacerlo. La verdad nunca tuvo una oportunidad. ¿Cuántas vidas se perdieron porque los medios de comunicación principales no supieron cómo, o simplemente no se molestaron en priorizar a esta comunidad? ¿Cuántas vidas se podrían haber salvado si existieran más de 500 medios, en su mayoría pequeños y con pocos recursos, hubieran podido llegar a 64 millones de personas?
Presentamos Latino Media Consortium
Para 2030, la población Latina crecerá a 72 millones. Los Latinos son una parte integral de nuestra cultura, economía e historia Estadounidense, y aun así, siguen siendo prácticamente invisibles en el panorama mediático de Estados Unidos.
A medida que muchas fundaciones filantrópicas, organizadas e inspiradas por el movimiento Press Forward, se están movilizando para inyectar al menos 500 millones de dólares en noticias locales para intentar salvar los medios Estadounidenses, aplaudimos el compromiso tan necesario y ejemplar que la coalición de financiadores de Press Forward ha hecho a través de sus procesos de otorgamiento de subvenciones alineados individualmente y mediante Press Forward.
Sin embargo, el estado desesperado de los medios Latinos ha dejado cada vez más claro que necesitamos destacar cuán necesario es invertir de manera equitativa en la infraestructura de los medios Latinos. Ocho operadores de medios Latinos —liderados por Lucy Flores, cofundadora de Luz Media, y Amanda Zamora, cofundadora de 19th News y fundadora de Agencia Media, con el apoyo del Valiente Fund y la Latino Community Foundation— lanzaron el Latino Media Consortium para perseguir este objetivo.
Colectivamente, los editores de Latino Media Consortium atienden a audiencias nacionales y locales, tanto inmigrantes como nacidos en EE. UU.; son organizaciones con y sin fines de lucro, y sirven a los Latinos en sus idiomas preferidos, ya sea en inglés, español o ambos. Informan sobre temas fundamentales para la vida de los Latinos —como la atención médica, el cuidado infantil, la educación, los temas laborales, los sistemas gubernamentales, entre otros— así como sobre la comida, el cine, la música y la cultura que unen a nuestras comunidades. Los medios independientes de propiedad Latina cuentan con la confianza de las audiencias Latinas, algo que los medios convencionales no tienen. Y merecen una inversión transformadora.
Y están creciendo. Los editores del Latino Media Consortium aumentaron su alcance digital en Estados Unidos en un 48% en el último año. En conjunto, llegan a más de 1.4 millones de personas —casi el 4% del mercado de noticias digitales para Latinos— a través de sitios web, redes sociales, WhatsApp, eventos, transmisiones y pódcasts. Con presupuestos comparativamente limitados y salas de redacción con pocos recursos, estos medios Latinos están creciendo porque cuentan con la confianza de las audiencias Latinas, algo que los medios tradicionales no tienen.
Y merecen una inversión transformadora.
Los Latinos siguen contribuyendo a este país, y rara vez piden algo a cambio que no sea lo que se han ganado. Pero ahora estamos pidiendo, en nombre de los 64 millones de Latinos en la nación, una inversión equitativa en un imperativo esencial para preservar una democracia libre y funcional. Cada año, un número récord de Latinos se convierten en votantes elegibles, y cada año vemos una participación récord de votantes Latinos en elecciones a lo largo del país. Permitir que una comunidad tan vital permanezca desinformada, vulnerable y confundida es, en el peor de los casos, inmoral y, en el mejor, una falta grave contra la democracia.
Durante los próximos cinco años, el Consortium se propone recaudar y distribuir 100 millones de dólares en subvenciones transformadoras para un ecosistema completo de medios que atienden a audiencias Latinas en el entorno digital. Estamos reincorporando periodistas al trabajo, produciendo noticias, información y contenido culturalmente relevante, y fortaleciendo capacidades en áreas como redacción de subvenciones, desarrollo de negocios, operaciones y desarrollo de productos. Una inversión sólida en todo el ecosistema es crucial para ayudar a estas organizaciones de noticias y medios a escalar y sostener sus operaciones a largo plazo.
Nada menos es suficiente para este país y esta comunidad.
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Los miembros de Latino Media Consortium son: