Voices of Justice

For Immediate Release — April 8, 2009

“Voices” film and Latino media panel set for April 15 at Stanford

The public is invited to a reception, documentary film preview and panel discussion at Stanford University on Wed. April 15 about the challenges and opportunities for Spanish-language media in an era of transformational change in journalism and the nation.

The event will begin at 6 p.m. with a reception in the Oksenberg Room on the 3rd Floor of Encina Hall near Hoover Tower. The program will begin at 7 p.m. with a preview screening of the film “Voices of Justice” honoring the bicentennial of Latino newspapers in the U.S. and a panel discussion on Latino media to follow. The event is free and open to the public.

Panelists include Monica C. Lozano, Publisher & CEO of La Opinión, the nation’s largest Spanish-language daily newspaper, and Sr. Vice President of Newspapers for ImpreMedia LLC; Félix Gutiérrez, Professor of Journalism and Communication in the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication, who has written extensively on Spanish-language journalism and Dawn Garcia, Deputy Director of the John S. Knight Fellowships for Professional Journalists at Stanford University, whose 2008 master’s thesis at Stanford explored the political evolution of Spanish-language and digital media in the U.S. The panel’s moderator, Antonio Ruiz-Camacho, was the managing editor of Rumbo, a Spanish-language newspaper network for first and second-generation Latinos in the San Antonio, Houston and the Rio Grande Valley areas. He is currently a 2008-09 Knight Fellow at Stanford.

“At a Crossroads: Latino Media in the U.S.” is one in a series of programs being held around the country this past year to commemorate the bicentennial of the first Spanish-language newspaper published in the United States. The nation’s first Latino newspaper, El Misisipí, was founded in New Orleans on Sept. 7, 1808.

The event is sponsored by the John S. Knight Fellowships for Professional Journalists at Stanford University and “Voices for Justice: The Enduring Legacy of the Latino Press,” a multimedia project of Acción Latina, an educational and cultural community organization in San Francisco.

For directions to Stanford and Encina Hall, please visit this URL: http://knight.stanford.edu/lectures/panels/2009/crossroads/

“This is a historic time for the Latino community as we remember the birth of the first Latino newspaper,” said Juan Gonzales, Voices project coordinator and founder/editor of El Tecolote, a bilingual newspaper in San Francisco’s Mission District. Other Voices events have been held in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Chicago, St. Louis, Houston, and Salt Lake City.

Long after El Misisipí was first published 200 years ago, Latino communities across the country have supported Spanish-language newspapers. In California, Spanish-language media has existed for more than 150 years, the first newspapers appearing during the Gold Rush. Today, there are more than 350 Latino newspapers in the U.S. with a combined circulation of more than 17 million.

The research that led to the identification of El Misisipí as the first Spanish-language newspaper in the U.S. and the Voices for Justice project all began at Stanford University in the early 1970s when Stanford Department of Communication graduate students Juan Gonzales and Félix Gutiérrez, now a Professor in the Annenberg School of Commuinication at the University of Southern California, met Ray Telles, executive director of the film, then assistant dean of students at Stanford.

At this event, veteran filmmaker Telles will show a 15-minute preview of a documentary film in production about the first Spanish-language newspapers in the U.S. and the dynamic development of the U.S. Latino press in the 200 years since. Telles, who has worked for 20 years in current affairs television documentaries, has won three Emmys and a duPont-Columbia Gold Baton award for his work.

After the film, a panel of experts will hold a discussion focused on questions including this one: what is the future of Latino media, given the dramatic transformation of the U.S. economy, immigration trends and the crisis in the print media?

Links:

The John S. Knight Fellowships for Professional Journalists: http://knight.stanford.edu/

Voices for Justice: http://www.latinoteca.com/latcontent/journalism-history

The panelists:

Monica C. Lozano is the Publisher & CEO of La Opinión, the nation’s largest Spanish language daily newspaper, as well as Sr. Vice President of Newspapers for ImpreMedia LLC, overseeing the company’s entire publications group. Monica serves on the Board of Directors of the Walt Disney Company, and Bank of America Corporation, the University of California Board of Regents, the Board of Trustees of the University of Southern California, the Weingart Foundation and the National Council of La Raza. In February 2009, she was appointed to the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board. La Opinión was founded by Monica’s grandfather in 1926 and has been led by a Lozano for over three generations. Under her tenure, La Opinión has expanded its distribution, launched new products and transformed itself from a newspaper company into a media company. La Opinión reaches just under 3.5 million Hispanic adults each week.

Félix Gutiérrez is a Professor of Journalism and Communication in the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication. A former Senior Vice President of the Freedom Forum and the Newseum, his responsibilities included journalism education and professional grants and programs, establishing and supervising Pacific Coast Center programs in Oakland and San Francisco. He tentatively identified El Misisipí as the first Latino newspaper in the U.S. in an article published in the Spanish-language media issue of Journalism History in 1977. Since then, he has written extensively on Spanish-language journalism, including co-editing a special issue of California History: The Magazine of the California Historical Society, dedicated to El Clamor Público, Southern California’s first Latino newspaper.

Dawn Garcia is Deputy Director of the Knight Fellowships at Stanford University. She was a newspaper reporter and editor in California newspapers for 18 years before coming to Stanford in 2001. She earned a master’s degree in liberal studies from Stanford University in June 2008; her thesis was titled “Spanish-language Media, Text Messaging and MySpace: The Creation of a New Counterpublic Sphere in California.” She was a Knight Fellow at Stanford in 1992, where she studied U.S.-Mexico relations, focusing on immigration issues. Garcia is President of the Journalism and Women Symposium, a national organization of women journalists and journalism educators.

Antonio Ruiz-Camacho, the panel’s moderator, is the managing editor of Rumbo Newspapers and a 2008-09 Knight Fellow at Stanford. Born and raised in Toluca, Mexico, Ruiz-Camacho earned his bachelor’s degree from Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City. He began his journalism career at Reforma Newspaper in Mexico City and his journalism career has included work in Madrid as the foreign correspondent at El Financiero Newspaper, editor-in-chief of a start-up, To2.com, in Mexico City and Houston, the managing editor for Daily Rumbo de Austin and then in 2006, as the managing editor for Weekly Rumbo, a Spanish-language newspaper network for first and second-generation Latinos in the San Antonio, Houston and the Rio Grande Valley areas. Since early 2007, he has overseen an independent blog on the immigration of Mexican young professionals called “Periferico Sur (Northbound).” He received the Bronze Award in the Outstanding Daily category by the National Association of Hispanic Publications in 2006.

For Immediate Release — April 8, 2009
For more information, please contact Dawn Garcia, Deputy Director of the Knight Fellowships at Stanford at degarcia@stanford.edu