Collaboration with ethnic and identity publishers becomes a must

For years, news leaders and funders all but wrote off the publishers of local alt-weeklies, legacy Black publications, and Spanish-language papers.

The contemporary wisdom was that these papers — and, by extension, their publishers — would never adapt their business models and their mindsets to the needs and habits of digital audiences. And, indeed, hundreds of these publications across the country have closed since the start of the pandemic.

As a news startup founder, I also once believed every aging, failing print-first publication was just waiting to be disrupted by an upstart digital publisher. Thankfully, I’ve gained some humility in the ensuing years. In 2024, we’ll witness the emergence of ethnic and identity media publishers as more valued partners in the information ecosystem.

Through my work with the Fund for Equity in Local News, a multiracial coalition of publishers represented by NAHP, NNPA, AAN, and several partners, as well as the support of the Google News Initiative, we launched our Transformation Tech program this summer. It’s designed to help legacy Black, Hispanic and alt-weekly publishers get better at earning digital revenue and launching new products. In addition to the curriculum led by lab director Todd Stauffer, publishers attend regular meetings with a personal coach and learning sessions with industry experts.

We’re learning that historically print-first publishers are more than capable of running plays from the playbooks of their digital-first counterparts — if they are given the time, training, and funding. It’s thrilling to see how much these publishers internalize and operationalize in just 90 days. In Longview, Texas, Joycelyne Fadojutimi, publisher of the East Texas Review, is launching a newsletter and installing Google Ad Sense on her website. Maria Amado of Westchester Hispano is upgrading her CMS to Newspack. In Reno, Nevada, Jimmy Boegle and his team are digitizing their archives and investing in content to grow the audience and reputation of the Reno News & Review.

Given Facebook’s deprioritization of news content in the News Feed and X’s descent into the swamp of bigotry and misinformation, we’re all rethinking our relationships with social media platforms. This is the time for local media publishers to capitalize on ad spending opportunities from nearby small businesses who have soured on advertising with the likes of Zuckerberg and Musk. Ethnic and alternative publishers with long-running ad operations and B2B relationships have running head starts on capturing this revenue.

As traffic from social platforms continues to plummet and AI products threaten search, the print product — in different forms — will also reassert itself as a useful distribution tool for local news and information. Local journalism funders will take note of how copies of printed news are more likely to reach the underserved readers they prioritize most — whether that’s in the doctor’s office, at church, or in the hair salon.

Finally, we are overdue to see the news ecosystem embrace ethnic and identity publishers as valuable partners in doing and distributing journalism. I had a conversation this summer with the publisher of a thriving Spanish-language publication in the South. A well-funded nonprofit news organization launched a year or so ago in her city. The leaders of that nonprofit news organization have never once reached out to her. One wonders whether they are dismissive of the community she has built or wholly ignorant of it. It’s past time for the bright spots of collaborative journalism ventures (like the New York & Michigan Solutions Journalism Collaborative and the Outlier Media Collaborative) to become the industry standard. As nonprofit publishers recognize that achieving their audience and fundraising goals will require more diverse representation and increased engagement from historically disadvantaged populations, working collaboratively with ethnic and identity publishing partners will become non-negotiable.

In the weird, polarized, post-covid(-ish) world that is 2024, what we once thought of as the liabilities of ethnic and identity publishers will become their strengths — and their tactical advantage.