Many markets, many choices: engaging the Latino audience

Newspapers looking to reach their Latino audiences have a variety of options, says an expert on Latino markets, and they shouldn't be preoccupied with whether their publication is in one of the nation's largest markets.

Robert Montemayor, principal of Montemayor Consulting in Bloomfield, N.J., whose case studies of Latino publications from across the country provide a range of blueprints� for newspapers to follow, will unveil three of those case studies during API's Reaching Latino Audiences seminar at the University of Miami, Jan. 9-14. API will post Web updates from the seminar on Wednesday, Jan. 12 and Friday, Jan. 14, and at a later date will produce a publication based on the seminar.

The case studies are part of "The Latino Target: Strategies for Engaging the Hispanic Market, " a report produced for the Newspaper Association of America's New Readers and Revenue initiative.

Montemayor said the NAA wanted to give publishers numerous choices for launching a Hispanic newspaper. Eight publications of various sizes and frequencies are reviewed in "The Latino Target. " Some were started from scratch, others were acquired by the newspaper. Some are bilingual, some are predominantly written in Spanish with a small amount of English-language content. "One size does not fit all, " he says.

Montemayor, a former reporter for the Los Angeles Times, is well versed in Latino issues. He was a major contributor to one of the Los Angeles Times' most definitive series of articles on the subject of Latinos, "Southern California's Latino Community, " which was awarded the 1984 Pulitzer Prize Gold Medal for Meritorious Public Service.

At API's Reaching Latino Audiences seminar, Montemayor will discuss all eight newspapers in his study but he will focus on three publications reflecting three different types of markets: La Conexi�n, published by The Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Va.; Reflejos, published by Paddock Publications in Arlington Heights, Ill.; and Enlace, published by the San Diego Union-Tribune. Executives from each paper will be at the seminar to join Montemayor in the discussion.

"This will be a rare opportunity to get inside these newspapers to learn about content, operations, finances, what's working and what's not, " says API Associate Director Mary Glick, who will moderate the seminar.

The largest U.S. minority group

Although Spanish-language publications in the United States have been around for 200 years, they have increased in popularity and importance because of the growing Hispanic population in this country. More mainstream newspaper publishers are looking for ways to attract Latino readers, which, according to the 2000 U.S. Census, is the nation's largest minority group�38.8 million or 12.5 percent of Americans. This figure doesn't include the 8 million to 10 million undocumented Hispanic workers in the United States, says Montemayor.

The Hispanic market is particularly attractive to advertisers because they are "vigorous consumers, " says Montemayor. In 2004, consumer spending among Hispanics reached an estimated $700 billion, he says.

By 2050, the U.S. Census Bureau projects that Latinos will number 98.3 million, or 25 percent of the U.S. population.

"If you look at it from now to the next 30 or 40 years, the role Hispanics play as consumers and potential readers will be huge, " says Montemayor.

The increased Hispanic population and its spending habits are encouraging publishers to consider adding a publication targeted to Latino readers to their portfolio of products, but Montemayor cautions that publishers also need to consider the operational challenges involved with such a decision.

"How do you fit a Spanish publication into an English-language operation? " he asks. Will a largely English-speaking staff sell the ads, or will the publication have its own staff of Spanish-speaking ad reps?

One size doesn't fit all

The three examples Montemayor will focus on in Miami run the gamut of how newspaper publishers might chose to produce a publication for a Hispanic audience.

"People assume these publications have to be started in large markets such as New York or Chicago or Los Angeles, " says Montemayor. But Fredericksburg, Va., a town of roughly 20,000 about 50 miles south of Washington, D.C., had the ideal situation. As the Hispanic population in Northern Virginia was exploding, more Hispanics were moving farther out to the suburbs and traveling to the Greater Washington Metropolitan area for work.

The Free-Lance Star in Fredericksburg, Va., saw this as an opportunity and started a trial newspaper in December 2003. The response was so great, says Montemayor, the paper decided to produce a monthly publication, La Conexi�n, which is written almost entirely in Spanish.

Paddock Publications, which publishes the Daily Herald in Arlington Heights, Ill., outside of Chicago, purchased a bilingual publication, Reflejos, in 2000. This past September, Paddock made Reflejos a predominantly Spanish-language publication with about 90 percent of the content written in Spanish, says Montemayor. However, Paddock still produces a bilingual edition that is sent to schools and libraries, and is used to teach English to Spanish-speaking students. This has almost doubled the circulation of this suburban weekly, allowing it to compete with Hoy, published by the Tribune Co. in Chicago, and La Raza, which is published for the Chicago market by, ImpreMedia, which also owns La Opini�n in Los Angeles and El Diario/La Prensa in New York City. ImpreMedia is backed by a private investment group that includes Clarity Partners in Los Angeles, Halyard Capital Fund in New York City, ACON Investments in Washington, D.C., and Toronto's Knight Paton Media.

The San Diego Union-Tribune began its weekly, Enlace, from scratch in 1998 and it is now the predominant newspaper for Spanish speakers in San Diego County, says Montemayor. The paper, which is written entirely in Spanish, has gone through several iterations and at first struggled to find its niche. Since then, he says, it now appears to be on track with a circulation of about 88,000.

"These cases are from papers large and small, from different regions, serving readers from countries up and down the Americas, " says Glick. "They provide a snapshot of an industry in transition, and we can learn from their experience. "