ImpreMedia Adds To Chain With 'La Raza' Buy

By: Mark Fitzgerald With Monday's announcement that it will acquire the Chicago weekly La Raza, ImpreMedia in a little more than a year has grown from a fledgling venture-capital fund to a chain with the largest Spanish-language newspaper in each of America's largest markets.

ImpreMedia began its expansion in the summer of 2003 with the purchase of 50,019-circ El Diario La Prensa, which -- since the revelation that roughly half the circulation of Tribune Co.'s Hoy was bogus -- is now recognized as the biggest Spanish-language paper in New York. This January, it added La Opinion in Los Angeles, at 126,628 average daily sales the biggest circulation Spanish-language daily in the nation. (Hoy also publishes editions in Los Angeles as well as Chicago, but it has not publicized its circulation figures. )

ImpreMedia bought La Raza from PrensAmerica Holdings Corporation, a company of the Chicago-based venture-capital group Hispania Capital Partners; it had owned the paper only since September 2003. The paper -- named by E&P this year as one of "Ten That Do It Right" -- is mostly distributed free to households in heavily Hispanic ZIP codes.

With an audited combined distribution and paid circulation of about 169,000, La Raza is not only the largest Spanish-language paper in Chicago, it's the largest Spanish-language weekly in the nation.

No terms of the La Raza sale were disclosed.

In a telephone interview, ImpreMedia Chairman and CEO Doug Knight said the acquisition of the biggest paper in what is now the third-largest Hispanic market made a lot of sense. "Between those three cities, you have 32% of all Hispanics in the United States," he said. "There aren't a lot of English-language papers that can deliver that kind of penetration of a market."

Knight added that ImpreMedia continues to look for acquisitions, and that there is a "real possibility" that it might use its existing properties to create new Hispanic papers.

Knight said longtime La Raza executive Robert Armband, whom he described in the statement announcing the deal as "instrumental in (the newspaper's) remarkable growth for more than a decade," will remain as publisher and CEO of the paper and its related publications.

"On behalf of our readers, this is the right thing," Armband told E&P. "Since we're right now offering our readers 'mas,' with the resources of La Opinion and El Diario, we can certainly offer more information from both El Caribe and from Mexico. Advertisers will have a greater ease of use in harnessing Hispanic print. And with the opportunities of a three-market buy, we can return more to our investors."

Armband said the Hispania Capital investors were not eager initially to sell the property, the group's first venture, so soon. "I convinced them that this would take La Raza to the next level," he said. Armband and Hispania are still partners in a Yellow Pages venture, and the PrensAmerica name will continue in existence, he said.

Hoy's interim Publisher Digby Solomon Diez noted the new owner in a statement issued by Tribune. "We believe there is room in the market for a number of media voices and Hoy will continue serving readers with high-quality journalism," he said. "Since September 2003, Hoy's editorial team has continued the great journalism of its predecessor Exito, the Spanish-language weekly newspaper published by the Chicago Tribune for 10 years. Hoy's deep roots in the Chicago Hispanic community enable it to provide the day's top news with emphasis on issues most relevant to Chicago readers, and provide local and national advertisers with marketing opportunities that deliver results."

With the addition of La Raza, ImpreMedia papers now reach a total of 1.9 million readers, according to Scarborough research, said Erich Linker, the company's senior vice president/national advertising sales.

ImpreMedia is backed by a private investment group led by Clarity Partners, a Los Angeles-based equity firm with $800 million in capital focused on media properties; Halyard Capital, a New York private equity firm with $450 million in capital; ACON Investments, a Washington, D.C., firm with $600 million in capital affiliated with Texas Pacific Group; and Knight Paton Media Corporation, a newspaper industry investment consulting practice of ImpreMedia Chairman and CEO Knight and ImpreMedia President and COO John Paton.