Reporting on Latino/a/x Communities

A Guide for Journalists

Teresa Puente, Jessica Retis, Amara Aguilar, Jesus Ayala Rico

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000582819
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Journalism
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This book offers a critical and practical guide for journalists reporting on issues affecting the Latinx community.

Reporting on Latino/a/x Communities emphasizes skills and best practices for covering topics such as economics, immigration and gender. The authors share honest stories about challenges Latino/a/x journalists face in newsrooms, including imposter syndrome and lack of representation in news, along with strategies to face and tackle systematic barriers. Stories from leaders in the media industry are also featured, including journalists and media professionals from ABC News, Los Angeles Times, Alt.Latino at NPR, and mitú. Additionally highlighted are experimental and non-traditional new initiatives and outlets leading the future of news media for Latino/a/x audiences.

This book is an invaluable guide for any student or journalist interested or involved in the news media and questions of Latino/a/x representation.

1Reporting on Latin/a/x Communities Lessons to Learn

Jessica Retis and Teresa Puente

DOI: 10.4324/​9781003212331-1

As we embark into the new decade to report about the demographic changes of this country, it becomes imperative to provide journalists as well as journalism students and educators with a comprehensive understanding of Hispanics and Latino/a/x/s¹ communities and contribute with lessons to learn about how to better report on these heterogeneous groups. While there have been many attempts to educate journalists on how to cover diverse communities, to date there is no textbook that can be used as a guide to prepare journalists in covering the ever-evolving and heterogeneous groups that are becoming the majority minority of the country. This volume seeks to provide a comprehensive understanding of Latino/a/x/s and introduce a unique manuscript that can be used in the classroom to advance quality journalism. Yet, as years to come, what we propose here needs to be revisited, and we hope that in the next decade, when we learn about the new demographic of this country, we will be ready to keep advancing in our understanding of the transnational nature of Hispanics in America.

Latina/o/x communities have been part of the United States since, and even before, the annexation of Mexican and Puerto Rican territories, in 1848 and 1898, respectively. More recently, the 2020 U.S. Census showed how Latinxs have been key to the nation’s growth. The Hispanic population was 62.1 million in 2020, almost 19 percent of the population, and it grew 23 percent. The population that was not of Hispanic or Latino origin grew 4.3 percent since 2010 (U.S. Census, 2021). By 2050, when the nation’s racial and ethnic mix will look quite different than it does now, Hispanics are estimated to rise to around 30 percent of the U.S. population (Passel & Cohn, 2008). While Latinos of indigenous descent and Native Americans are the oldest groups to inhabit much of what is today the United States, Hispanics in the United States could constitute the second largest country of bilingual peoples, only behind Mexico’s 127 million. Latinxs have accounted for more than half of total U.S. population growth since 2010 and even though their growth is not as fast as previous years, they will still represent a very relevant group in the nation (Krogstad, 2020). Yet, for most of the contemporary decades, they have been marginalized or treated as foreigners in public discourse.

Why This Book?

Just 30 years after the Declaration of Independence of the United States, the very first Spanish-language newspaper was launched aiming at Spanish exiles who opposed Napoleon’s conquest of Spain – El Misisipí, 1808. As Kanellos (2009) argues, because Hispanic intellectuals often went into exile in New Orleans, Philadelphia and New York, early Hispanic publications were founded in those cities. As the Southwest became part of the United States, so did their inhabitants and their cultural industries, which were incorporated in the American landscape (Retis, 2019). On the other coast, while Puerto Ricans became citizens, they were nonetheless still treated as foreigners (Gonzalez, 2011). Despite this situation, they have been contributing with their cultural production to the American public sphere but mostly in Spanish. Historical lenses help us understand how for more than two centuries, the American news media landscape has been composed of these binomial factors. On the one hand, English-language mainstream media reporting mainly for Anglo audiences, and on the other hand, Spanish-language media reporting mainly for Hispanic audiences. With the passage of the years and throughout more than two centuries, both components have contributed to what various authors have defined as in the middle of this multilevel media ecology, which is to understand the environment in which media is produced and used, and how they influence society or, in other words, understanding the relationship between media and individuals from an ecological perspective (McLuhan, 1964; Scolari 2012).

Today, many journalists, journalism educators and students are familiar with environmental issues. What we bring into the discussion is the understanding of demographic changes and the news media environment to find out what roles news media play and how media synergies intertwine in our post-digital world through the lenses of Latinxs communities. We found reporters, editors, producers and publishers trying to exercise the best practices they know about to cover the ever-changing communities at local, national and international levels. While professional preparation of journalists became the major contribution to this industry since 1908 when the first Journalism School was founded at the University of Missouri, there has always been a lack of comprehensive understanding of how to report on Latino/a/x/s communities. Latinos have been the fastest-growing ethnic group in the United States but remained almost invisible to the mainstream media. And when they become visible, they tend to be portrayed through stereotypes as criminals, law enforcers, cheap labors or hypersexualized beings (Retis & Badillo, 2015). In 2014, the National Association of Latino Independent Producers (NALIP) addressed what they called a “Latino media gap” (Negrón et al., 2014): as Latino consumer power grew, relative Latino media presence shrunk. Stories about Latinos constituted less than 1 percent of mainstream news media coverage, and the majority of these stories featured them as criminals. Furthermore, the NALIP survey of 19 primetime shows in 2013 revealed that there were no Latino anchors or executive producers in any of the nation’s top news programs, and only 1.8 percent of news producers were Latinos. More recently, the latest diversity surveys conducted by the American Society of News Editors (ASNE) in 2019 and 2020 revealed that Hispanics comprised less than 7 percent of the workforce in newsrooms.

These studies confirmed the trend noted by previous reports produced by the National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ), The Network Brownout Reports. In 2005, they found that out of an estimated 12,600 stories aired by ABC, CBS and NBC, only 105, or 0.83 percent, were exclusively about Latinos or Latino-related issues, a slight increase from 2004 when Latino stories comprised 0.72 percent of coverage. Historically, as the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) argues, Latinxs have been out of the picture: they have been virtually absent as characters in the entertainment media and as correspondents and anchors in news media (NCLR, 2008: 21). Hispanics tend to be made invisible in the mainstream media discourse, and when they appear they are represented with a greater negative connotation than other ethnic minorities (National Council of La Raza, 1997). The analysis of the representation of Puerto Ricans in the New York Times and the New York Post found that three quarters of the news was centered on conflict (ibid). As Wilson and Gutiérrez (1985) stated, in the 1970s a major part of the news about Hispanics was around issues like youth in gangs, immigration or inter-racial violence. Historically, as Rodriguez argued, Latinas have been portrayed as either frilly señoritas or volcanic temptresses, with thick accents and aggressive sexual appetites (Rodriguez, 2008: 2). Furthermore, as Uriarte (2003) addresses, generalizations about Hispanic youth as gang members and drug dealers criminalize the Hispanic group in general.

Throughout the decades, bilingual and bicultural intellectuals, foreign-born journalists and contemporary diasporas moved around English-language and bilingual newsrooms in trying to do their best to cover the growth of Latina/o/x/s communities in their neighborhoods, cities, towns, states and the nation. The lack of professional preparation in the understanding of these complex socio-demographic changes became the main challenge for most of the newsrooms. The results brought lights and shadows, or luces y sombras, to the coverage of Latinxs communities in the United States. Two hundred years after the launch of the first Spanish-language publication, Latinxs are not a minority anymore but a relevant part of American society at 62 million and almost 19 percent of the U.S. population (Jones et al., 2021). Thus, journalists as well as journalism educators and students must be informed and advised on how to improve the quality of their reporting.

Contributors of this volume have all been journalists and became journalism educators at a certain moment of their professional career. All have faced the challenge of being sometimes the only Latinx in the newsroom or the only Latinx educator in their journalism school, while trying to improve the better coverage of our communities. Moving from the newsroom to the classroom implies bringing an in-depth understanding of news making to the professional preparation of younger journalists. All of us noticed the lack of a textbook that we could use in the classroom to better train journalism students in covering the Latinx communities. As we met in various academic conferences of professional gatherings, we all shared our needs as college educators. We needed a handbook that we could use to better prepare our students. Hence, we convened to write one. This is the result of a collective effort and our very first attempt to provide a handbook to reporting on Latino/a/x/s communities. All contributors are journalism educators, all work with students in English, Spanish or Spanglish. We are all part of the community we report about and have the cultural competency of sharing the dos and don’ts. We write this volume not only by and for our communities, but we are also seeking to contribute with a relevant document that can bring light to every newsroom and every journalism classroom. This is our main goal.

FIGURE 1.1 NAHJ chapter at CSULB

What Will You Find in the Following Chapters?

This book is meant to be a practical guide for aspiring journalists or early career journalists who want to understand how to cover the Latinx community in a more comprehensive way. Each chapter has an introduction, a case study, an interview with a Latinx journalist, tips, discussion questions and assignments. Each contributing chapter also examines a theme or a topic of coverage.

Portrayals of Latinos in the media are often negative in modern and historic times. It’s important to examine some of this offensive coverage so we understand why fair and inclusive coverage is so important today. Chapter 2, by Melita M. Garza, Associate Professor of Journalism at Texas Christian University, examines some of the ways Latinos have been historically maligned in the media, especially with offensive terminology. She invites journalists to use history to give the coverage of Latinos greater context. The case study examines how La Prensa, the nation’s most widely distributed Spanish-language newspaper in the 1930s, contributed to Mexican American identity formation by countering stereotypical images of Mexicans and immigrants in the English-language media and by advocating for healthcare, school desegregation and many other causes. This chapter also features an interview with Axios reporter Russell Contreras.

A beat is a subject area of news coverage. Latinos and immigration can be stand-alone beats. But the inclusion of Latinos in coverage should be included in all beats such as politics, sports or business. Latinos of all ages, professions, genders, races and classes should be included in beat coverage. There also are many respected Latino sources, from academics to community leaders and nonprofits to think tanks to be sourced. Chapter 3, by Professor Edna Negrón, Professor of Journalism at Ramapo College of New Jersey, examines how a reporter develops a beat. Latinos should be included in the coverage of any beat. This chapter offers guidance on how to develop Latinx sources, and the case study is about UnidosUS, a nonprofit, nonpartisan national organization with a network of nearly 300 community-based organizations that advocates for more equitable opportunities for Latinos, such as better healthcare, quality schools, increased voter participation and business growth. The chapter also features an interview with Monsy Alvarado, social justice writer for NJSpotlight.com, and The Record, a part of the USA Network.

Latinos can be of any race and Hispanics is an ethnicity, according to the U.S. Census. Almost 60 percent of U.S. Hispanic adults say they have experienced discrimination or been treated unfairly because of their race or ethnicity (Gonzalez-Barrera, 2019). There also is racism within the Latino community as historically, and in modern media, the whiter looking Latinos have b...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Content
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• Prologue
• 1 Reporting on Latin/a/x Communities: Lessons to Learn
• 2 Historical Representations of Latinos in the Media
• 3 Beat Reporting and Developing Sources in the Latinx Community
• 4 Race, Colorism and Policing in Latinx Communities: Getting the Real Story
• 5 Reporting on Latinas: “She” Se Puede!
• 6 Intersectional Latinx/a/o: Journalism Coverage and the LGBTQ Community
• 7 COVID-19 and the Impact on the Latino Community
• 8 Reporting on Immigration
• 9 Reporting on the Latino Vote and the Diverse Latino Electorate
• 10 Covering Latinos in Business and the Economy
• 11 Dispatches from the Frontlines: Foreign Correspondents Cover the World and Beyond
• 12 Broadcast TV News: Reporting and Producing for El Noticiero
• 13 Radio and Podcasting on the Latinx Community
• 14 Social Media and the Digital Landscape
• 15 Writing and Reporting Bilingually
• 16 A Glimpse into the Future: Digital-Native Latinx News Media
• Index