Post Co.'s 'Everett (Wash.) Herald' To Launch Spanish-Language Paper

By: Mark Fitzgerald Pushed by its Washington Post Co. corporate owner and pulled by a burgeoning Latino population, The Herald in Everett, Wash., is launching a Spanish-language weekly with ambitions to dominate the Puget Sound market.

La Raza de Noroeste launches Friday, April 21, after more than a year of research that ultimately involved interviews with 1,000 of the area?s first-generation Mexican immigrants and other Spanish speakers, the paper?s publisher, Jorge Rivera, said in a telephone interview Tuesday.

In mid-2004, the Washington Post Co. bought its first Spanish-language paper, the Arlington, Va.-based free weekly Tiempo Latino, and since then they?ve been suggesting its other papers look into Spanish-language publishing in their markets.

?What we found was that there were smaller papers that were getting a little bigger, but there was no dominant paper,? Rivera said. Focus groups, he said, also showed there was no real brand loyalty to any one paper.

La Raza de Noroeste will launch initially with a distribution of 20,000 copies, delivered in a ?hub-and-spoke? system from Everett to Spanish-speaking independent contractors who will place the papers in their local areas all along the Interstate 5 and Interstate 405 corridors in the sixty miles from Mount Vernon to Tacoma, taking in all or parts of three counties. ?We?re going for a larger geography, the whole Puget Sound,? Rivera said.

Much of the distribution will be through some 700 ?tiendas,? the small strip-mall food stores and other retail outlets, he said.

There has been good advertiser reaction, especially among mid-sized and larger businesses, Rivera said.

?Our business plan, if all goes according to plan, is we should be profitable, or at least breaking even, by end of the year,? he said.

La Raza de Noroeste will be a tabloid, the overwhelming choice of the focus groups, he said. The prototype shows a bold design, beginning with a green banner dominated by the word Raza and continuing with full-color on every page.

Focus groups also answered the Herald?s questions about the mix of news. As much as 80% of area Hispanics are first-generation Mexican newcomers, but they were most interested in getting local news in Spanish, which Rivera said came as a surprise. In the prototype, even the sports section is dominated by stories and graphics about the results and standings of local soccer leagues.

Latinos also said they liked the idea of the paper?s other editorial thrust: news and information that helps them assimilate to the U.S. system. ?I call them the ?how-to?s and where-to-get? stories,? Rivera said.

The new weekly will have two dedicated reporters plus freelancers who will report from the four Mexican states that is home to the overwhelming numbers of newly arrived Latinos.

Rivera, a native of Colombia, was a writer and director of technology for the nation?s leading paper, El Tiempo in Bogata. He was the Herald?s director of systems and technology when he was tapped for the publisher?s post. The new paper will have a Web site, www.raza-nw.com, that will launch simultaneously with the print product.