Healthy Partnerships Strengthen Us All

East Palo Alto Today will be nine years old in January 2015. This year, especially, it has worked in collaboration with other ethnic media organizations to expand and enhance the news coverage it has provided to its readers.

The partnerships the paper has formed have only added to the collective strength that collaborating media organizations bring to the individual communities they serve.

As 2014 comes to a close, EPA Today, on behalf of its founding organization, the East Palo Alto Center for Community Media, would like to thank all of its followers for the opportunity to be of service. We know that with their support and your support, EPA Today will be able to continue to fulfill its commitment to bring relevant news and information to its reading public. It will also be able to continue to strengthen its partnerships with other media organizations.

As the new year unfolds, we have one request of you. As EPA Today and the East Palo Alto Center for Community Media partners with others, a key goal is to continue our collaboration with you - our reading public.

So, as you read these words, please consider how you can partner with us in 2015 to enable us to fulfill our commitments to you. For ideas, see http://eepurl.com/baufA9

The Role of Ethnic Media: Increasing in Influence

With California's growing multi-cultural population, one can expect that various ethnic groups will develop and support media outlets that focus on their individual issues. Félix Gutiérrez, a professor of journalism and American Studies & Ethnicity at the University of Southern California, supported this idea when he said, “In a multicultural society, people pay attention to media that pay attention to them.”

A 2013 Pew Research Center survey showed that the mainstream media in the U.S. is declining dramatically. Nearly one-third of the survey's respondents (31%) said that they had deserted their regular news outlets because they no longer provided them with the in-depth news and information to which they had grown accustomed.

A poll taken several years ago by the firm Bendixen & Associates, showed that ethnic media in the U.S. is thriving. According to the poll, one quarter of the U.S. population regularly turns to ethnic media for information and 13% of U.S. adults said that they preferred ethnic media over mainstream media as a source of their information.

As mainstream media outlets shrink and undergo various transformations, ethnic media outlets are continuing to assume responsibility for getting critical news and information to their individual communities.

While some might debate the extent of the growing power of ethnic media, their influence is evident in many communities throughout the U.S.

One of the nation's most prominent ethnic media organizations is New America Media, also known as NAM. In future posts, I'll say more about New America Media and describe how East Palo Alto Today and my show, Talking with Henrietta, are working with NAM to get information to the public on several important issues.