A Vigorous Defense: Latino Journalists Respond After New Owner of Boston Hispanic Paper Criticizes Hispanic Media
By Mary Thang, EthnicNEWz.org
Latino publishers in Massachusetts, including one that has served Spanish-reading communities for more than 30 years, are angry that the president of Phoenix Media/Communication Group called Hispanic newspapers in the area “not very good.”
Brad Mindich, president of the media group that now owns Spanish-language El Planeta newspaper, told EthnicNEWz.org in an interview last month that “the other Hispanic newspapers published in the area, with due respect, they are not very good.”
“For someone who cannot even speak or read Spanish to offer an opinion on editorial content on publications…serving the Latino community comes across as arrogant and condescending – which are the last qualities I want to see in someone controlling a media outlet in my community,” said El Mundo‘s vice president, Alberto Vasallo III, in an open letter that follows the cover story (see the full text of the letter below).
The story quotes Dalia Díaz of Lawrence-based Rumbo, whose articles and photos have been republished on EthnicNEWz.org; Victor Cuenca of Providence en Español in Rhode Island, who is a past interviewee of NEWz; Sergio Rivera of Worcester-based El Vocero Hispano; and Víctor Manuel González Lemus of Siglo 21 of New England.
The four publishers were all offended by Mindich’s remarks.
“We cover our communities in different ways and all with great sacrifice, with much love and not only for commercial purposes” (“Nosotros cubrimos a nuestras comunidades de diferentes formas y todos con mucho sacrificio, con mucho amor y no solamente por asuntos comerciales“), said Díaz, director of Rumbo. (more…)