Demographics drive the Latino media story

Rural Georgia is not the place you'd expect to find a boom in Spanish-language media. But Dalton, a small town in the north, is now home to three Spanish-language newspapers and a Spanish-language pop radio station.

Hispanic media have grown in the past decade - newspapers alone have increased 55 percent - and with the news this year from the census that Hispanics are the largest US minority, more attention is being paid to how to reach this group (see related story, page 15) that has a purchasing power of more than $490 billion a year.

The idea of tapping a new market is on the minds of some mainstream papers, which have been watching their profits and circulation go south recently.

"We have to find new readers and new revenue streams," says Tim Franklin, editor of The Orlando Sentinel, which announced this month that it will launch a bilingual paper, El Sentinel, in August.

Existing Spanish-language media outlets are hopeful that the census news will bring them more business from national advertisers and more competitive ad rates. Some say they are already hearing from ad people and gaining in stature in the eyes of their mainstream peers, who are learning of their large following and quality journalism.

"It hit like a bomb: 'Hey, we're here!'," says Maria Elena Salinas, co-anchor for top-rated network Univision, which often gets better ratings than mainstream competitors and has won Emmys for its coverage. "I think we're going through one of our best times," adds the 20-year veteran.

Even before the 2000 head count, Hispanic media - print, radio, and TV in Spanish, English, or both -were on the rise. Since 1990, Hispanic newspapers have grown from 355 to 550, according the National Hispanic Media Directory. Hispanic magazines grew from 177 to 352.

Some of these publications are affiliated with mainstream entities - like five-year-old People en Espanol from Time Inc., which now has a circulation of 325,000. Kirk Whisler, publisher of the directory says that 132 of the Hispanic newspapers not owned by Hispanics, including those published by papers like The Orange Country Register (Excelsior) and The Chicago Tribune (AExito!).

The Orlando Sentinel was already talking about starting a bilingual paper at the end of last year, but local census figures sealed the deal.

"Hispanics now make up 18 percent of our market," says Mr. Franklin, adding that in Osceola County, to the south of Orlando, the Hispanic population has risen 182 percent in the past decade.

Growth like that is not lost on advertisers. Mr. Whisler, who has tracked Hispanic media for decades, says in the last five years there's been huge growth in national and local ad dollars for print. National advertising alone has grown 207 percent, from $82 million to $252 million.

Debora Parker, in Dalton, knows about that firsthand. She's in charge of sales for both the Spanish-language radio station and one of the weekly papers, El Tiempo, recently acquired by the same owner.

"I've been in this business [radio sales] for 12 years, but never have I had the opportunity to work with big companies like Home Depot," she says.

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