Ethnic Press


May 19, 2001


BROOKE GLADSTONE: New York City has long been the capital of the English language press; but in the last decade it's been the capital of the ethnic media too, and as Amy Eddings reports, their growth is now getting the attention of advertisers.

AMY EDDINGS: To illustrate how far the community and ethnic press has come, Abby Scher, director of the Independent Press Association of New York grabs a copy of its directory. She picks a country -- India. In the mid-70s there were only two newspapers serving the Indian-American community. Today--

ABBY SCHER: One, two, three-- four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. There are 9, and the Polish press has expanded; the Bangladeshi press has expanded; the Dominican press has expanded; Pakistani. It's astonishing.

AMY EDDINGS: She says the newest papers are being launched by the city's newest immigrants who are primarily from the Dominican Republic, former Soviet Union, China, South Asia and the Caribbean. Some older papers are finding new audiences and some are fading away because they're no longer relevant.

WOMAN: I noticed the ones that died tended to be the ones that were from the older generation of immigrant stream. There -- for instance in the '70s there still was an Italian language anarchist publication [PHONE RINGING] that Sacco and Vanzetti were involved in, in the '20s. It was still around in the '70s. [PHONE RINGING] But it -- that's also when it disappeared. So the older generation-- especially the more [PHONE RINGING] ideological press has gone.

AMY EDDINGS: Scher says the ethnic press of today is more diverse. There's a weekly Cricket newspaper for example, a Spanish language humor paper and publications devoted to entertainment, culture and religion. It's also more news-driven and more grounded in local issues. Many ethnic papers are run by people like Prakesh Parekh. He had been active in the Indian-American community for 20 years before he became editor of Desi Talk in 1997, and he credits his connections with the paper's success.

PRAKESH PAREKH: That's very important. I think that helps a lot because it establishes your credibility with not only the sources of news, I would say, or the people who manage the organizations or people who do the things in the community -- because they already know you very well.

AMY EDDINGS: Eighty-six percent of English language newspapers are owned by corporations, but the ethnic press is primarily independent --started by entrepreneurs who sometimes work second jobs to finance their paper. Observers say such papers help to shape a group's identity and spur political participation.

AMY EDDINGS: In Manhattan's Little India Saqib Din stands by his yellow cab and sips coffee. The avenue is lined with South Asian grocery stores and restaurants where Bangladeshi, Indian and Pakistani newspapers are displayed.

SAQIB DIN: We usually read the Pakistani newspapers, and -- because-- we get a lot of information about taxi rules or about our community, about everything. We are new in this country, and we are curious to know about the things, about everything we want to know, so we read these [SIREN] local newspapers.

AMY EDDINGS: Businesses have noticed. Newspaper executives and ad agencies say ad revenue in the ethnic press has grown tremendously in the past decade. The National Association of Hispanic Publications cites a 400 percent increase. Most of these advertisers are local businesses. Big retail chains often bypass the ethnic press in part because they don't recognize their readers as a market, and in part because many ethnic papers are free and do not have a subscriber base to audit. Saul Gitlin, vice president of Kang and Lee, an advertising agency that specializes in the Asian-American market thinks big companies will change their minds.

SAUL GITLIN: Projections had already shown that by the year 2000 just the three largest multicultural groups in the United States -- Hispanics, Asians and African-Americans -- were projected to account for 30 percent of the U.S. population, and that being up from approximately a quarter of the U.S. population in 1990. And I think once you get to a third of the entire population of the country, even skeptics have to sit up and take notice.

AMY EDDINGS: Gitlin says that's already happening as more data from the census, including that all-important marketing tool, the average household income, is released. That in turn could mean more money for papers like Gugerat Times, Filipino Express, the Russian Forward and La Voz de Queens -- which means they will be able to cover their communities even better. For On the Media, I'm Amy Eddings.