Newspapers' Goal: Score With Spanish Readers

By: Randy Dotinga It only fills one page in the sports section -- and not even the front one. But a daily Spanish-language report about the World Cup series is kicking up a small fuss at the San Antonio Express-News.

The soccer stories in Spanish and English are different, and a handful of readers called to complain. They weren't bilingual and wanted to learn more about those interesting-looking articles they couldn't understand. But there wasn't much the callers could do -- except learn Spanish.

This kind of melding of cultures will become more common in the newsroom and on the printed page, predicted top media executives at the 20th annual convention of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists here this month.

Newspapers must reach out to both Spanish and English readers as the divide between the two becomes smaller, said Jack Fuller, president of the Tribune Publishing Co.

"We need to establish our newspapers and companies as important and responsive, so, as their language habits change, they will feel comfortable moving to the English newspaper."

One way to do that is to modify coverage of the world. "I've been preaching the need to establish an 'Americas' page" at the Los Angeles Times, he said. "Foreign news is extremely relevant to the Latino population for obvious reasons."

Fuller, who speaks Spanish, also called on newspapers to do a better job of covering "enormous" demographic trends as revealed by the 2000 census. "The last time this happened, when blacks were going north, we blew the coverage, and that remains a blot on the history of journalism. We can't do that this time."

George Irish, president of Hearst Newspapers, said the 2000 census is important for another reason -- because it tells newspapers who their new readers could be.