Ethnic Media Content Analysis

The lone Spanish newspaper we examined in our Day in the Life study, the tabloid format Rumbo de Houston, had a different approach from the English-language newspapers.

Crime, for instance, barely made an appearance in the May 12 Rumbo de Houston. Indeed the paper was less focused on crime (12% of the news space) than any other newspaper type we examined.⁷ The only traditional crime-focused story was about an attack on a journalist in Nuevo Laredo , the town near the U.S.-Mexican border where the lawlessness had became national news in the U.S.

Local news, however, was not lost in the issue. On the front page, the paper featured a large story on the mosquitoes infected with the West Nile virus, followed by a piece about the death on the city’s light rail system, which the paper called “one of the most dangerous transportation systems in the whole country.” There was a story about the regulation of Houston taco stands and one on the “pressures” involved in the mayor’s prodding of firefighters on a contract.

National news did not figure prominently in May 12th’s Rumbo. There wasn’t a story with a national focus until page 6, and that was a preview of a local meeting about military base closings. On page 8 there was a piece on a potential new law that would make drivers’ licenses more uniform. The war in Iraq didn’t make an appearance until page 9, which had a short item about the number of deaths since the installation of a new Iraqi government. And the small plane that violated D.C. airspace wasn’t even mentioned.

We again saw the foreign focus we found on Spanish-language TV. Just after the opening local stories, page three carried a piece about how residents of El Salvador would have to use an extra digit to make calls in the country. Other stories reported on money being shipped from immigrants in the U.S. to friends and family in Mexico , on the Mexican government’s opposition to the building of a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, and various short items about Central and South America (the subjects of eight stories in all).

Rumbo was more like its English-language counterparts in some ways. Roughly 25% of the newshole in the tabloid was devoted to government, compared with 27% for national newspapers, 23% for suburban papers and 19% for metro newspapers. About 10% of the hole in Rumbo was devoted to foreign relations, compared to 11% in the national papers and 8% in the metro papers (it’s probably not a surprise that suburban papers did little foreign coverage, 2%). Domestic issues got roughly the same amount of coverage in Rumbo as in other metro papers, with both devoting roughly 14% to the topics.⁸

On the whole 47% of the Spanish-language stories we examined had an international focus. That far outstripped all the other types of papers: metro (24%), suburban (8%) and even national (30%).⁹

Spanish-language papers were close to the metro-paper average when it came to journalist opinion — neither had much, only 3% of stories and 2%, respectively.¹⁰