The circulatory system is to the human body as the foreign language press is to immigrants: they respectively transmit the essential nutrients of blood to the human body and information to immigrant communities.
In 1922, Robert Ezra Park published his well-known book The Immigrant Press and its Control. The text documented and analyzed – during the early twentieth century – the strategic role played by the ethnic press – in constructing a sense of community, fostering variable forms of immigrant incorporation, and in establishing distinct forms of collective engagement as neighborhood residents, workers, and participants in the electoral process.
During the second decade of the twenty-first century, the New York ethnic press continues to grapple with similar yet distinct issues related to residence, employment, and local electoral engagement. Which brings to the fore an important question: Is the contemporary foreign language immigrant press be up to this important historical task? QueensLatino, an innovative New York based Spanish language publication, provides a rich portal for addressing this crucial question.
Javier Castano, the veteran Colombian-American journalist, launched QueensLatino as a hybrid digital/print platform in June of 2010. In an industry swirling from the impacts of rapid technological and economic restructuring, QueensLatino is a technologically innovative niche platform. And as an immigrant news vehicle it is a response to the transformative innovations in digital communications technology that are sweeping away long held journalistic conventions, professional practices, and the economic viability of print markets.
By blending a traditional print format with web-based digital technology, QueensLatino is designed to reach an ethnically and economically diverse audience of Spanish language immigrants in northwestern Queens County. And as local fast-breaking stories emerge they are posted on-line in the digital portal. While larger substantive commentary are published once-a-month in the print version that is distributed free of charge. Moreover, while the bulk of the coverage is in Spanish, occasional timely opinion pieces are published in English by guest commentators. This dual approach builds upon the informational needs of Spanish language readers while simultaneously reaching out to the growing cohort of second generation immigrant New Yorkers. And by publishing commentary in English, local elected officials and activists are exposed to issues that are important to local Spanish speaking communities.
As a community-based immigrant platform, QueensLatino covers important stories and issues not adequately covered by the English language media which lacks the Spanish language and cultural skills to penetrate this growing market. In this regard, QueensLatino took the journalistic lead in initiating a detailed coverage of such important stories as: the land grab associated with the Willets Point construction project and the Major League Soccer initiative to build a sports stadium in Flushing Meadow Corona Park; the proposal to establish a Business Improvement District along Roosevelt Avenue; and the role played by local Latino elected officials in supporting a range of local economic growth projects that accelerate residential gentrification and fosters immigrant displacement.
In covering these ground-breaking stories, QueensLatino relied on knowledgeable local residents, immigrant leaders, and civic activists as both informants and as community journalists. This novel approach breaks with the traditional model of so-called “disinterested journalism.” In effect, QueensLatino’s version of community journalism is rewriting the playbook on covering ethnic related issues. By providing access and voice to local residents, with respect to important local issues, QueensLatino is explicitly crafting the development of a generalized Latino perspective that moves beyond the parochialism that marks most of the existing ethnic media. The model assumes that the creation and distribution of knowledge should ultimately serve the short- and long-term social, economic, and political interests of its readership. And in doing so, QueensLatino has emerged as an innovative community-based journalistic platform that reflects the needs and concerns of a bottom-up Latino perspective that is struggling with the pivotal issues of social justice and immigrant empowerment.
Clearly QueensLatino is a work-in-progress. Nonetheless its use of innovative digital technology and non-traditional forms of engaged community journalism provides crucial insights into how the immigrant press could be reinvented to meet the institutional challenges that mark a rapidly changing and disruptive time.
Arturo Ignacio Sánchez, Ph.D. is chairperson of the Newest New Yorkers Committee of Community Board 3, Queens. He has taught contemporary immigration, entrepreneurship, and urban planning at Barnard College, The City University of New York, Columbia University, Cornell University, and Pratt Institute. Currently he is a professor of urban sociology at LaGuardia Community College.
