[1]What did the world that was put forward by the ethnic media look like on May 11, 2005? It varied significantly, depending on where you looked.

The violation of “No-Fly” Washington, D.C. airspace by a small plane, a big story in mainstream and some ethnic news outlets, didn’t even crack the paper the next day in Rumbo de Houston, that city’s Spanish-language daily newspaper. Instead, news of a mosquito infected with West Nile virus was the big news. On local Spanish-language TV in Houston, a Hispanic man killed when his car was hit by the city’s light rail system was a major story.

One national Spanish-language newscast led with the airspace violation, but the other led with the court appearance of an Illinois man accused of killing his 8-year-old daughter and her friend. Iraq, meanwhile, made nary an appearance in any of the outlets, while the topic of immigration was a part of the news mix of each in one way or another.

Our Day in the Life of the News sample of ethnic outlets from May 11 was a mix of different kinds of media.

National ethnic media are hard to find, but we recorded two newscasts, Univision’s and Telemundo’s. Beyond that, we captured the local ethnic media —newspaper, TV and radio — in Houston, Milwaukee and Bend, Ore. We recorded two local Spanish-language newscasts, both in Houston. Among the cities we chose we examined one foreign-language daily newspaper, Rumbo de Houston. None of the Spanish-language radio we recorded in our cities had meaningful news content. We also looked at one African-American publication, a weekly community newspaper in the Milwaukee area, the Milwaukee Community Journal.

The sample, while admittedly small, revealed noticeable differences in what audiences got from those outlets.