Sampan in rough waters?
Boston Phoenix’s media reporter Mark Jurkowitz has an interesting post on his blog regarding the commercially and sometimes journalistically shaky ethnic media in our region.
Apparently, even the bilingual Chinese-American Sampan is having financial troubles.
I’d be lying if I said I was a friend of foreign-language ethnic media. I am not and I wish it would go away.* English-language ethnic media, however, is an entirely different beast in my estimation. Such a newspaper can not only provide its ethnic community with news, commentary and a sense of community (so to speak) but also offer outsiders a glimpse into said community. That’s one reason I like Sampan so much. It not only publishes news relevant to Boston’s Chinese and Chinese-American community (mostly about Chinatown, of course), but also includes discussions on fairly sensitive topics, like the relationship between Japanese/Japanese-Americans and Chinese/Chinese-Americans. Even if you don’t find stuff like that interesting, it might be a little useful to know what the publishers of the newspaper think interest their community, some of your fellow Bostonians.
According to Jurkowitz, many ethnic media outlets are struggling financially. The point counterpoint debate on that might go like this:
- Well, most newspapers suffer from falling or stagnating ad revenue.
- Yes, but this is a growth sector, a rapidly growing demographic.
- Sure, but it’s splintered between Haitians, Chinese, Central Americans, Russians, Koreans, Congolese, Irish, Nigerians, Vietnamese…
- True, but they often prefer ethnic media.
- Okay, but here’s a bottom-line for you: Many of them are poor, some even illiterate. They’re not exactly the most premium newspaper market imaginable. Take this factoid as an example: In 2010 Hispanics are projected to sit on 9% of consumer spending. That’s great, but by then they’ll make up 16% or so of the population and they skew heavily younger than the overall population. Just because ethnic newspaper were a hit among Ellis Islanders a hundred years ago doesn’t mean they’re destined to be players today.
Controversial blog-commenter “N.” (and I’m not him, I swear) makes a good point on Jurkowitz’s blog:
I worry about the Globe and Herald; NOT little undesired papers. They should worry about how to integrate their concerns within the larger community, how to get a Somali or Chinese reporter to get into a Globe or Herald and raise awareness, if not by his/her reporting then by the higher profile and more people will ask questions and would get closer to that ethnic community.
I largely agree with that. As much as I like Sampan, it is far more important to me that Boston remains a city with two major newspapers. I also happen to think that both newspaper do a decent job at covering local immigrant communities, and also issues that affect such communities, such as education, the job market and so on.
Unlike Jurkowitz, I actually think both the Herald and the Globe do a decent job of reporting on the changing demographics of our city and region. I’m not saying they’re doing a great job, and the Globe in particular could do well to hire a Metro columnist who’d break the reigning black/white duopoly, but it is not as if rapid the growth of immigrants and non-whites has gone unnoticed by the two big ones.
*Disclosure: I run a Swedish-language web site, but most of its traffic, by a very wide margin, comes from Dominicans/Dominican-Americans, African-Americans and Red Sox-Americans who just can’t get enough Manny Ramirez.
