2005 Annual Report - Ethnic Media Content Analysis

These two Spanish-language papers are the largest in New York City, and they share some common traits. Both are very concerned with local New York politics - and not just City Hall, but also community news. Both work to keep readers up on what the area's Latino advocacy groups are doing as well as labor news. But the two newspapers have very different histories and ownerships.

El Diario/La Prensa is a daily tabloid formed by the merging of El Diario, founded in 1913, and La Prensa, founded in 1961. The combined paper was purchased by the Canadian company CPK Media in 2003 and is sold on newsstands throughout New York and as far away as Philadelphia and Boston. In 2004 CPK and the Lozano Family, owner of Los Angeles's La Opinion, joined forces to create ImpreMedia. (The company bought La Raza in Chicago later in the year.)¹³

El Diario's circulation is about 50,000.¹⁴ In the 26 days we examined the paper, we found 104 page-one stories, counting headlines and teases because El Diario does not run copy on the front page.¹⁵

Hoy, another tabloid, was founded in 1998 by Times-Mirror (before that company was purchased by Tribune) as a way to tap into the growing Spanish-language market. It publishes daily, except Saturdays, and has since spawned sister papers, also named Hoy, in Chicago and Los Angeles, which have different local content. It is available on the newsstand in the greater New York metropolitan area and by subscription in a broader area. After the scandal in 2004 involving inflated reader numbers, a new audit showed Hoy's circulation to be 49,681.¹⁶ In the days we looked at the paper, there were 81 stories in all on the front page.¹⁷

Over all, the two papers looked similar in content. They were more like traditional U.S. daily newspapers than other ethnic papers. Both ran stories that were primarily concerned with local issues - 39% of El Diario's 41% of Hoy's. Both papers also paid significant attention to stories with a U.S. National geographic focus - 31% for El Diario, 30% for Hoy.¹⁸

Beyond local and U.S.-based articles, there was a small difference in the way the two papers split the geographic focus for the remainder of the stories we examined.

El Diario's coverage had more of a Latin flavor, with 19% of the front-page stories relating to the many home regions of its readership. The paper did pieces that looked at politics, sports and celebrities in and relating to countries in the Caribbean and Central and South America. Only 11% of the stories we looked at concerned other foreign geographic regions.¹⁹

At least on the days we captured, Hoy was a bit more international. The geographic focus for the remaining stories was evenly split between the home regions of its readers and other regions of the world. The paper had more front-page stories than its competitor on the bombing of commuter trains in Spain, for instance - some might argue that immigrants from Spain would be a target of the Spanish-language newspaper - and was more likely to pick up global terrorism and accident stories.

Geographic Focus of Hoy

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Source: PEJ Research, numbers reflect total of 81 stories

Geographic Focus of El Diario

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Source: PEJ Research, numbers reflect total of 104 stories

Topics Covered in Hoy

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Source: PEJ Research, numbers reflect total of 81 stories

Topics Covered in El Diario

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Source: PEJ Research, numbers reflect total of 104 stories

When it came to the topics covered, neither paper was very dedicated to U.S. politics or government - 4% of stories for El Diario and 6% for Hoy. In fact, large-scale national issues were not given a lot of front-page play in either paper. Domestic affairs topics lead the way for both papers (34% for El Diario and 42% for Hoy), but those stories usually concerned local topics - often crime. El Diario did more stories on crime and crime trends, 12 in all, than on any other topic except terrorism. The same was true for Hoy, where the 11 stories on crime and crime trends headed the list of topics. Articles related to terrorism made up 12% of the topics for each paper.²⁰

There were some interesting differences between the two papers, however.

Perhaps because we counted the front-page teasers for El Diario and it generally teased at least one soft-news feature there were many more entertainment/celebrity and lifestyle stories in its tally - 13% and 16% of the total respectively. Jennifer Lopez made more than a few appearances in these front-page teaser stories - including the "bitter ending to the Bennifer saga" in January as well as the way the "Public sets out against J. Lo and Marc" in June. In February the paper fronted a story speculating about whether two well-known Spanish-language news anchors had married.²¹

Hoy's front page wasn't as interested in celebrity or lifestyle (though J. Lo cracked its front page as well), but one thing that stood out in its topic selection was the high number of stories concerning immigration - 12% - which fell under the domestic affairs rubric. The stories ranged the country, from a local report about a Mexican man who accepted a voluntary return home on April 15 to a piece about the postponed deportation of a Salvadoran girl in North Carolina on April 8.²²

Pieces with home-region topics didn't appear in either of these papers as much as they did in other papers we examined. Home-region topics were the focus of only 10% of all the stories on the front page of El Diario and only 7% of those stories in Hoy.²³

Over all, both papers reflect a mix of approaches to the news. Judging by their front pages, they aren't exactly national or local newspapers, but they do not spend an inordinate amount of space on stories from various home regions, either. Their readers ultimately get something similar in tone and approach to what they might find in New York's Daily News - though obviously with more space devoted to issues that matter particularly to their Spanish-language readers. On inside pages, both papers have extensive sections devoted to Latin America, and their food, sports, entertainment and opinion sections are more targeted toward Latin American topics. They will be interesting to watch in years to come; both represent the changes in ownership that are hitting the ethnic media, about which more later.