By: Mark Fitzgerald Ric Oliveira can tell by the chatter outside his Fall River, Mass., office window just how quickly the area's ethnic demographics are beginning to shift. "In the past year, and especially in the past three or four months, the conversations have gone from English and Portuguese to English, Portuguese and Spanish -- in equal measures," he said.
To serve that growing Hispanic market, Journal Register Co. last Friday launched the first Spanish-language weekly in the southern Massachusetts region near the Rhode Island border. El Latino Expreso is a 32-page, free-distribution tabloid published through the chain's long-time Portuguese-English bilingual paper, O Jornal, and its Fall River daily, The Herald News. Expreso launched with a press run of 13,500 copies distributed to about 300 locations.
Oliveira, editor and publisher of O Jornal for the last six years, is Expreso's publisher as well. The paper had been in planning since last April, he said in a phone interview.
"It really is based on O Jornal," he said. "We saw a need at this point in time for this (Latino) community to have a strong voice so they don't have to go through the same problems and pitfalls that the Portuguese community went through 30 years ago. It seemed like a logical choice to hire a Latino staff and give the community a paper."
Many of the initial advertisers, Oliveira said, are Portuguese businesses that grew by advertising in O Jornal, which turns 30 years old next month.
The editorial mix includes news and sports stories from around Latin America as well as local news and features. One weekly staple will be a citizenship preparation quiz, Oliveira said. "We are really helping them to assimilate," he said.
Expreso's news staff includes a journalist with extensive experience in her native Costa Rica, who was working as a cleaning woman in a local nursing home when she was hired. "Needless to say, she was delighted to come here," Oliveira said.
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