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May 8, 2012 | 11:21 AM | By

The promise of the English-speaking Latino audience

Photo by Jerry Bunkers/Flickr (Creative Commons)

English-language content directed at Latinos is on the rise, especially as media companies go digital.

The official announcement yesterday that the Disney-owned ABC News has teamed with Univision to launch a 24-hour cable news channel for English-speaking Latinos next year is just the latest in a series of similar announcements from media companies.

In the past two years, we’ve seen English-language ventures aimed at a Latino audience that include Fox News Latino, HuffPost Latino Voices and Patch Latino.

There has also been the more recent launch of Voxxi, a English-language website for “acculturated Latinos” headed by a former editor from Spain’s EFE news agency, and a new bilingual YouTube content network, MiTu. And while we’re on ventures with creative names, let’s not forget mun2, the Telemundo-affiliated cable network for young Latinos with content in English and Spanish.

Not long ago, most content directed at Latinos, on air and in print, was in Spanish. Why the language shift, especially as media companies focus more on digital content? Back in February, when news of the Disney-Univision partnership first came to light, I posted a Q&A with Giovanni Rodriguez, a social-technology and marketing expert with Deloitte Consulting who studies and writes about the Latino media market. Here’s a bit of what Rodriguez had to say about the power of content en inglés, and why marketers and media execs seem to be discovering it now:

True, it does feel like the interest in English has come all of a sudden. But in fact, the market has been moving in this direction over the last few years. Fox launched its English-language site Fox News Latino back in 2010, just weeks before the mid-term congressional elections. And there were several, though less visible, experiments in English-language content before that.

Still, there is a new development that’s worth noting. The most recent launches – by Univision, Disney and NBC – are in part the outcome of the new attention that Latino digital is enjoying by digital influencers. The big marketing trade publications are all following the emerging power of Latinos online and media companies are taking notice.

As to the appeal, we know we can speak to each other in English. Whatever can’t do in Spanish, we will do in English. It’s easier to connect. You can speak Spanish sometimes, but you speak English so you can connect with the larger world. There are a lot of Latinos who want to connect with the larger world and on the Internet, that larger world is in English. They can play in the larger world and still remain Latino.

There’s more: Data from the 2010 census that in the last year has been making its way into corporate strategies points to a major shift in the nation’s Latino population, which is that the bulk of the growth in this population is no longer coming from immigrants. It is now coming from their children, i.e. U.S.-born Latinos who will grow up speaking English.

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FILED UNDER: ABC, Disney, English-language content, Latino consumers, Univision
April 17, 2012 | 11:28 AM | By

Skeptical reaction to Obama’s second-term immigration reform promise

One impressive thing about President Obama’s recent pledge that he’d try to get comprehensive immigration reform passed in his second term if reelected, made during a televised interview with the Spanish-language Univision network, is the seemingly bipartisan nature of the unhappy reactions that skeptics have been posting online.

During a network interview Friday, Obama said: “I can promise that I will try to do it in the first year of my second term. I want to try this year. The challenge we’ve got on immigration reform is very simple. I’ve got a majority of Democrats who are prepared to vote for it, and I’ve got no Republicans who are prepared to vote for it.”

A good intention perhaps, but much of the online reaction since has tended to bring up where the road paved with good intentions leads to. During Obama’s first term, immigration reform efforts like the Dream Act have failed while enforcement-based policies like the controversial Secure Communities fingerprint-sharing program have stuck, contributing to record deportations.

The end result, if reaction to Obama’s statement is any indication, is skepticism from voters who had hoped for comprehensive immigration reform by now – and jeers from those who don’t support it. On both right- and left-leaning websites, critics have been recalling similar campaign promises in 2008 and dismissing Obama’s statement as election-year pandering, with reactions ranging from yawns to snark. Here are a few comments from a handful of sites.

Under a piece in the left-leaning Firedoglake, GlenJo wrote:

Wow, this from the guy that deports more people than Bush.

What won’t he say to get votes?

What will he do once he gets them?

And this one from Charles, posted in the conservative National Journal:

Bo panders to hispanics, Promises amnesty for illegal alien lawbreakers. Does this radical have no shame.

On the left-leaning social justice magazine site ColorLines, which posted a story yesterday, Noreformboycottcensus posted:

“I can promise that I will try to do …” What a bunch of BS. We heard it all before. Obama had 2 years of Democratic majority in Congress and still he choose not to work on immigration reform. Obama, give us a reason to vote for you other that “Republicans are even worth”.

And under a piece in the conservative Hot Air blog (which also featured comments along the lines of “half your family is here illegally”) Nethicus wrote:

Manager to Employee: Look, you really haven’t done anything for the company in the past 3 years, except spend lots of money and actually hurt our bottom line. So don’t expect to work here in November.

Employee: Wait! You don’t want to do that. I have great plans for my contributions to the company after November!

Manager: Why didn’t you do that stuff the past 3 years?

Employee: Look out! Paul Ryan is pushing your grandmother off a cliff! *runs*

Of course, passing comprehensive immigration reform is no easy task, and it does require bipartisan support. Reform proposals under the Bush administration faltered also. In the absence of legislative reforms, one thing the Obama administration has done recently is to make small changes, for example, a proposed administrative tweak under U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services that would make it easier for some family members of U.S citizens to legalize.

But the administration’s staunch enforcement record is a difficult hurdle to overcome. Interestingly, the online back-and-forth over Obama’s statement to Univision has been similar to that in a long string of comments under a piece last year in the liberal Daily Kos, which cited past examples of the president’s immigration reform pledges. While some defended Obama, several others then vented frustration with his policies, among them YucatanMan who wrote:

He has zero credibility on immigration after his utterly shattered promises.
Worse, as KOS points out, his administration has vigorously — enthusiastically and viciously — gone after undocumented immigrants who are not guilty of any violent crimes.
We know it.  He knows it. His administration has made the number of deportations an evaluation milestone in the performance appraisals of ICE agents.
It’ll be interesting to see how he tries to salvage this self-created mess.  Broken promises are pretty hard to smooth over. 
FILED UNDER: Immigration reform, President Obama, Record deportations, Secure Communities, Univision
November 10, 2011 | 7:58 AM | By

Encore: ‘The New American Reality’ (Video)

I’ve been attending the Latinos in Social Media (#LATISM) conference in Chicago, where during a panel this morning, I saw once more the moving Univision video titled “The New American Reality.” I posted the video several months ago, after first seeing it during the National Association of Hispanic Journalists convention in Orlando.

It’s just as good now as it was then, with simple lines and graphics that not only bring to life the census data on the growing Latino population in the U.S., but which describe the dual identity lived by children of immigrants a way that is spot-on. So here’s an encore.

One of my favorite lines: “I live at the intersection of my two cultures. I take from each what I choose.”

FILED UNDER: Culture/Identity, Economy, #LATISM, NAHJ, The New American Reality, Univision
June 16, 2011 | 2:42 PM | By

‘The New American Reality’ (Video)

One of the visual highlights today at the National Association of Hispanic Journalists convention in Orlando, Florida was a video produced by Univision, shown during a lunchtime panel on Spanish-language media and intended to drive home its importance as a way of reaching the vast and growing Latino market.

But the video’s simple lines describing life lived between two cultures spoke to many in the room, who soon began tweeting about it, in a personal way.

A few of the lines that resonated:

I live at the intersection of my two cultures. I take from each what I choose.

I move easily between two worlds because I speak Spanish and I speak English. Y a veces I speak both.

My duality is my reality.

Substitute the Spanish for Korean, Vietnamese, Farsi, Armenian or any other first language retained by the American children of immigrants, and the lines apply universally.

One attendee, @bcrodriguez, tweeted afterward “This video presentation about Latinos in America just gave me goosebumps.”

FILED UNDER: Culture/Identity, Economy, NAHJ, National Association of Hispanic Journalists, Univision