Entrepreneurs create a community newspaper for Hispanics in the Bluegrass

By Katheran Wasson
Community Journalism
University of Kentucky
Fall 2005

When Andrés Cruz and Juan Galicia purchased La Voz from its original owner in January 2003, times were tough. Galicia said their two-man staff compromised sleep and salary just to get the paper out every two weeks.

These days, things are a little better for the staff of Lexington’s bilingual newspaper. Those initial production difficulties have eased, the staff has grown and Cruz said circulation has swelled to 8,000, while actual readership is estimated to be at least double that figure.

So the La Voz staff is looking for a new challenge.

“We aren’t dealing just with a newspaper, I think we’re trying to move into becoming a media group,” Cruz said. He said he wants La Voz to report the news through “many outlets to serve the community,” and in the near future that includes a website and radio broadcasting.

The Growing Voice

Cruz said the plan to create a “media group” has a goal of advancing Lexington’s Latino community. He said La Voz will go online in February and will hit the radio airwaves later in the year.

La Voz’s website will feature the print version of the newspaper and community resources, such as important phone numbers. Cruz said the staff is working with an outside web designer to complete the task.

“Yeah, you do have to go to school for web design,” joked Managing Editor Randi Ewing, referring to the fact that neither she, nor the owners of La Voz, attended journalism school.

La Voz would be the only Latino newspaper in the area to upload its content to the web.

And then there is the radio component. Cruz said Galicia worked in radio before they started La Voz, and his “expertise” is making the multimedia project easier. He said Galicia came up with the idea of broadcasting La Voz’s content.

“We want to do a radio version of the newspaper that we want to distribute to stations in English and Spanish so they know what’s happening in the community,” Cruz said.

Cruz said the plan is to record the news in a studio, and then distribute it to local radio stations for free. He said the broadcasts will feature fresh content—it will not just be someone reading La Voz on the radio.

John Edwards, general manager of WRFL-FM, the University of Kentucky student radio station, said he would gladly make room in his lineup for La Voz.

“I’m always looking for Spanish programming,” he said. “There are a lot of Spanish speakers in Lexington, and it’s a community that doesn’t have a lot of representation on the radio waves.”

There are currently two radio stations that broadcast Spanish content in Lexington. La Pantera WXRA 1580-AM is a Clear Channel radio station that plays exclusively Latin music and does not have news programming. The WXRA website claims a Latino population of 100,000 in its listening area of 16 counties.

Radio Vida broadcasts on WYGH 1440-AM, a gospel station out of Paris, Ky. The station primarily plays religious content, but several hours of each day is devoted to Radio Vida. Radio Vida carries news, sports and weather in Spanish.

Edwards said he thinks people would listen to La Voz’s news on his station, but he said it would be more successful if there was music mixed in too.

“I think it would do well on the small, lower band FM radio stations and college radio stations,” he said.

Ewing said the broadcast venue will allow the staff to report news in a timelier manner. “There’s a lot of things we can’t cover, coming out every 15 days,” she said.

Cruz said the radio broadcasts will give the print version of La Voz more exposure in the community and will bring in more advertisers. He said they will also help Latinos who have trouble reading.

“It goes back to that time issue, and people working all the time,” Ewing said. “When they’re working, they have the radio on and we can get more news out to the people.”

Cruz is also interested in publishing a Braille version of La Voz, although it will not be produced as often as the current print version.

La Voz in the Community

The Village Branch of the Lexington Public Library is located in the heart of Lexington’s Latino neighborhood. On a typical night there, Latinos browse books, surf the Internet and get help with homework, and many pick up a copy of La Voz on their way out the door.

Asking the librarians there if La Voz is the most popular Latino newspaper is about as silly as asking if their library has any books.

“Oh yeah, hands down, no questions asked,” Children’s Librarian Amy Olsen said. “We start with a stack about this big,” she said, expanding her hands about three feet wide. “About a week later we have what you see over there,” she said, motioning to a small stack of around 30 newspapers. Other librarians within earshot expressed their agreement.

Olsen said members of the Latino community trust La Voz to an extent, and although the newspaper has made mistakes and errors in the past, she said she understands that the small staff has something to do with that.

Ewing claimed that errors in La Voz are generally insignificant, and she said it is because her newspaper doesn’t “cover a lot of hard facts.” She said most mistakes are about the number of attendees at an event, or an incorrect photo caption.

“We’re so involved in the community as individuals, that it’s easy for us to look at that and catch things that maybe another person that might not catch,” she said.

“They put out a pretty darn good paper for the resources they have,” Olsen said. But she said she isn’t the most objective person to ask. Just two months ago she said La Voz granted the Village Branch free space in each issue to advertise upcoming events. When their website goes up in February, Olsen said it is likely the library’s website will be linked to it.

“They came to us and offered us that, we don’t have that with other newspapers,” Olsen said. “In this community it’s all about partnerships.”

In each issue, La Voz seeks the opinions of the community in a front page sidebar called, “La Voz de la Calle,” or “The Voice on the Street.” In it, local Latinos answer a question about a recent or upcoming event. Each respondent’s photo is displayed next to his or her comment.

La Voz does not provide space for letters to the editor, and uses La Voz de la Calle as a substitute.

“We would love to have them, but letters to the editor are difficult for the Latino community,” Cruz said. “I think the main thing is fear—people don’t want to be identified, they don’t feel that they have many rights in this country, and that apathy is reflected in the amount of letters that we receive.”

Cruz said he knows Op-Ed pages are a big draw for readers, so he would like to develop one at some point. The first issue after this interview included the request for opinions at the end of a front-page story, and it provided contact information for calls or letters to the editor.

Friendly Competition: La Voz and Al Dia

Although La Voz may be the most prominent Spanish-language publication in the area, it certainly isn’t the only one. Many of the establishments that distribute La Voz have other free Latino newspapers right alongside it. But the local variety doesn’t faze Ewing.

“We have been able to keep the paper coming out for the last three years, made every single deadline with the content at the same level,” she said. “The only other person who’s putting a paper out like that is in Louisville, and it’s not bilingual, but they are putting out a paper very consistently.”

That paper? “Al Dia,” Cruz said, without hesitation.

Al Dia en America is a free bi-weekly newspaper based in Louisville. Editor, Publisher and Owner Jose Neil Donis said Al Dia has a circulation of 30,000 to 32,000, and a distribution area that spans 13 counties in Kentucky and Indiana. Donis said he has the audience to print about 10,000 more copies each issue, but he doesn’t have the money for it.

“I am trying to find a new printer, the one we are using now costs too much,” he said.

The content in Al Dia is similar to that of La Voz, but articles in Al Dia are significantly longer and more in-depth. Cruz said La Voz prints short stories because being bilingual cuts their space in half. “We try to be as concise as possible,” he said.

Donis said he would like Al Dia to become bilingual at some point. “That’s the plan,” he said. He said he occasionally translates part of a story into English, but at the most it is between five and eight lines.

Still, if Al Dia makes the transition into a bilingual paper someday, could it be real competition for La Voz?

“We help each other whenever we can,” Cruz said. “It’s like to say The Herald-Leader is competing with The Courier-Journal—it’s not like that, they are different regions and different areas.”

The editors of both newspapers said they try to focus on local coverage. Donis said he started Al Dia in August 2004 to help give the Latino community in Louisville a sense of identity.

“There was a need to have independent Hispanic media, something that wasn’t owned by a big corporation,” he said.

Donis said Louisville already had that type of publication, Hoy en las Americas, which is owned by Landmark Community Newspapers Inc. Hoy also has a circulation of 30,000, and since April 2005 it publishes weekly.

Landmark, which is based in Shelbyville, is one of the largest owners of weekly newspapers in the country. Landmark publishes Hoy as part of Shelbyville’s twice weekly newspaper, The Sentinel-News. Hoy has been around since 2001, but is still second oldest to La Voz.

Louisville Latinos are responding to the “independent voice” Donis created. Since it premiered just over a year ago, Al Dia’s circulation has grown from 6,000 to now match that of Hoy.

There are a host of smaller Latino publications in the area too. El Mundo is an independently owned Lexington-based newspaper that focuses on general interest stories instead of local coverage. El Mundo publishes bi-weekly with a circulation of 2,500, said Editor Mari Bonifant.

El Comercio Hispano is also based in Lexington, but it is distributed throughout Northern and Central Kentucky. Its focus is on boosting Latino businesses through advertising. Actualidad is a bilingual magazine published in Lexington by Digraphics LLC. Latino USA is a national publication that distributes to several states in the Southeast.

Different Perspectives: La Voz and The Herald-Leader

When The Herald-Leader writes a story about the Latino community, the reporter calls La Voz, Cruz said. “Our paper is up in their editorial room so they know what’s going on,” he said.

Cruz said he is generally pleased with the coverage The Herald-Leader produces. Ewing agreed, and said she believes The Herald-Leader is making a real effort to cover the community more.

Sometimes, La Voz and The Herald-Leader end up covering the same story. The final product shows the different perspectives of the two papers, one that is writing from outside the community, and one that is writing as part of the community.

In October, members of the Lexington Hispanic Association recommended to the Mayor’s Hispanic Workforce Development Task Force that the city provide all residents with identification cards, regardless of citizenship status.

The Herald-Leader reported that task force members said they would recommend the IDs to the mayor when they met with her on Dec. 14.

In its coverage, La Voz claimed that fact is false, and that “it was not recommended to the mayor. Instead the Task Force recommended further investigation.” La Voz did not target the Herald-Leader, but did report “there has been a lot of confusion in the media and in the community.”

The Herald-Leader focused on legal issues surrounding the Lexington ID and the IDs some local Latinos use from foreign governments, and included quotes from two task force members and one member of the Lexington Hispanic Association.

La Voz described the meeting, but the bulk of its story presented myths and realities of the proposed city ID. The myths and realities focused on the distrust Latinos may have for the IDs. Coverage in La Voz was aimed to calm the fears of Latinos, and raise community support for IDs.

In early September a member of the Lexington Hispanic Association complained to city officials about a sign he saw in the County Clerk’s office. The sign read, “No hay ayuda en espanol,” which means, “There isn’t help in Spanish.” Fayette County Clerk Don Blevins said the sign was posted because the office’s only bilingual employee was on maternity leave.

Coverage by the two newspapers was similar. Both explained the confusion surrounding the sign and consulted Blevins. The Herald-Leader also spoke with members of the Latino community, but La Voz did not.

La Voz explained the law requiring bilingual services in more depth than the Herald-Leader, which only mentioned the federal law in a quote from the man who first brought the complaint. In its story, La Voz reported that it “distributed the picture [of the sign] to different activists and organizations.”

Cruz said La Voz chooses content that will “spur social change,” and this could be an example of that.

Cruz emphasized that La Voz does not compete with The Herald-Leader. He said the two papers help each other whenever possible. “They are so powerful they could do whatever they want, so it is good that they choose to help,” he said.

The Role of Advertisers

As with any community newspaper, advertisers play a big role in the production of La Voz. Cruz said that regular advertisers are especially important because their financial support covers the costs of publication and salaries.

But in a small community, there is a risk of collision between the business side and the editorial side. Although the Latino community is growing, its active members, like the staff of La Voz and business leaders, constitute a small group.

Ewing said there is some “interplay” between the advertisers and editorial content. “Some of the personal businesses advertised are people who are active in the community,” she said. “In a lot of ways we know a lot of those people from advocacy within the community and we’re on boards with them,” she said.

Ewing said the newspaper sometimes allows businesses to sponsor stories about themselves, but they are always labeled as sponsored articles.

Cruz insisted that although the ties are there, they don’t have any real impact on coverage. “So far they have never intervened with the content of the paper,” he said. “What they want is just a response from the advertisements they place, and they’ve had a pretty good result so far.”

Their good results are not surprising, considering La Voz’s high readership and community-oriented coverage. The newspaper owes some of its success to the fact that it is a community journalism outlet that is more focused on the community than the journalism.

“I think maybe it’s good that we didn’t go to school as journalists, because we’ve learned that we have to get our shoes dirty here—it’s not about being in an office, it was for a long time about not being paid,” Cruz said. “So more than being a professional career I think it’s a vocation, and I think a lot of journalists fail in that because they don’t see it as a vocation, it requires a lot of sacrifice, a lot of effort, constant work and so that’s the way I see it.”

Phone: (859) 257-3744, Fax: (859) 323-9879

Al Cross, director , al.cross@uky.edu

Last Updated: February 16, 2006