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June 16, 2005
Ethnic journalists
find common ground in NY
Yawu Miller
While New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave the
city’s official welcome to a national gathering of members
of the ethnic press last Thursday in Manhattan, it was the greeting
of Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carríon Jr. the evening
before that set the stage for the event.
“It’s kind of ironic that we’re here at the
New York Times having this discussion at the so-called paper of
record,” he told the audience of smartly dressed publishers,
advertising executives and reporters gathered for the annual meeting
of the New California Media.
“From a Latino perspective and the Bronx perspective, we
have a certain opinion of how the New York Times should cover
our community.”
Carríon’s allusion to longstanding tensions between
that city’s communities of color and it’s pre-eminent
daily reflected the sentiments of people of color in many major
U.S. cities.
As pollster Sergio Bendixon pointed out in his latest poll for
New California Media, ethnic media reaches 51 million Americans
— one in four U.S. adults — and 45 percent of those
consumers prefer ethnic media to the mainstream.
Despite the growing influence of ethnic media in the United States,
advertisers are not yet taking note, according to NCM founder
and Executive Director Sandy Close. Close says less than 2 percent
of the $145 billion spent on advertising in the United States
goes to ethnic media.
“Advertising has to expand its investment if these media
are to thrive,” she commented.
Close is looking to increase the ethnic newsmedia’s cut
of the advertising dollars by raising the profile of the ethnic
press.
“We want to bring the message of ethnic media’s central
role in communications to a national audience,” she told
the Banner. “To do that, we had to come to Broadway.”
NCM literally did just that, holding its first annual meeting
outside of California in Columbia University’s Alfred Lerner
Hall on Broadway.
“It’s an important part of bringing this message to
a national audience,” she said.
New California Media was founded in 1996 to facilitate cooperation
between ethnic media outlets in California and has grown to include
over 700 ethnic media outlets across the country.
Filling the auditoriums and meeting rooms at last week’s
conference were more than 1,260 print, web and broadcast newsmedia
professionals representing many of the outlets belonging to NCM.
Also present were members of New York’s Independent Press
Association — also founded in 1996 — which serves
as an umbrella organization for independent New York media.
Representatives of the Ethnic Media Project, a fledgling initiative
modeled after NCM and housed at UMass Boston’s Center on
Media and Society, were also present at the event.
In addition to its efforts to raise the profile of ethnic media,
NCM works with its affiliates to foster greater communication
and resource sharing. Newspapers share editorial content and the
organization publishes an online digest of stories from its affiliates.
The organization also conducts polls on issues ranging from ballot
initiatives to the war in Iraq. The polls often highlight differences
in public opinion between people of color and whites.
Close says the ethnic newsmedia in California serve as an important
counterpoint to the mainstream newsmedia, citing their coverage
of former Governor Pete Wilson, who aggressively pushed an anti-immigrant
agenda before his electoral defeat in 2000.
“They made it impossible for candidates to speak the Pete
Wilson line again,” she said. “If it hadn’t
been for the black media, the Million Man March would have crashed.
The mainstream media ignored it until a week before.
“If it hadn’t been for the Asian media, Wen Ho Lee
would have been railroaded. If it hadn’t been for Arab media,
nobody would have known that Arab men were being detained. These
are real issues.”
In addition to representatives from ethnic media outlets, the
convention drew marketing professionals from major corporations
including Bank of America and Sony Entertainment.
Television and documentary producer Callie Crossley, a Cambridge
resident, said the presence of advertisers indicates that the
corporate world may be waking up to the importance of ethnic media.
“There are corporate folks who are far along in the process
of understanding that it’s good business and bottom line
business,” she told the Banner. “But there are a lot
of people who are not at the table yet.”
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