Latina Voices Join the Blogosphere

News Taco and other blogs feed hunger for information

‘There is a mental and emotional space where U.S. Latinos live, but so far mainstream media haven’t found a way to enter it.’ - Sara Inés Calderón, NewsTaco.com

“Historically U.S. mainstream media didn’t allow Latinos into their institutions,” said Sara Inés Calderón, editor of NewsTaco.com. “Blogs have allowed Hispanics to become a center of news, to provide information, analysis and opinion from their own perspective.”

From its headquarters in San Antonio and with less than six months in business, News Taco is constantly being cited by other blogs, and even a few mainstream media outlets.

The blog has gotten almost 750,000 hits since Oct. 1, 2010, and has about 1,600 “likes” on Facebook and about 300 followers on Twitter.

“What we’ve seen in these six months that we've grown and evolved is that there is an enormous hunger among Latinos in this country--from those who have gone to school, those who have doctorates, to those who dropped out of high school, to see themselves reflected in the news,” said Calderón.

“Not only do we report the news, but we also comment, critique and share our experience while we are sharing information,” she added.

This experience comes from her experience as a Latina in the United States, but also from about 10 years of work, according to the Mexican journalist. She says she owes the success of her blog to the needs of the market – or perhaps the lack of one.

“News Taco could enter the market because there was no market,” Calderón said. “We talk about Latinos in the U.S. and the news pertaining to this population. There is a mental and emotional space where U.S. Latinos live, but so far mainstream media haven’t found a way to enter it, and we appeal to that specific niche.”

Mainstream media outlets have tried to reach the U.S. Latino community – and their pocketbooks – with specialized websites, but in Calderón’s opinion, sites like AOLLatino.com have failed to win the Hispanic market.

“Now that U.S. Latinos have more than $1 billion in purchasing power, mainstream media want to enter that market, but they don’t have the professionals to do it,” said Calderón.

“Latino bloggers are powerful because we have the information the mainstream media want but don’t know how to get ... they want what we have to offer,” she added.

“So they are looking for more and more Latino writers, bloggers and professionals who have the experience and wisdom they need to enter the Latino market.”

According to Calderón, the best example of this phenomenon was Fox Latino, which looked to BeingLatino.wordpress.com to provide articles.

It’s no secret that Fox News, the company that owns Fox Latino, hasn’t exactly been known for its affinity with the U.S. Latino community, and has presented the immigrant community in an unfavorable way.

“The mainstream media have looked to Latino bloggers to fix their mistake of not paying attention to the Hispanic population for so many years ... Now they’re trying to put a Band-Aid on the decades that they didn’t pay attention to us,” said Calderón.

“Meanwhile, News Taco, Being Latino, and other Latino blogs have been able to grow because they are part of the Latino population, its economy, its audience, and the media that have been ignored,” she added.

An alternative to immigration coverage
‘I’m not an angry citizen ranting about politics.’
- Adriana Maestas, LatinoPoliticsBlog.com

“The traditional media cover immigration in a questionable way and often give credibility to fringe groups, or focus on negative aspects of the immigration debate. They also use language that isn’t accurate or sensitive,” said Adriana Maestas, founder of LatinoPoliticsBlog.com.

This blog was born in 2007 with the intention of “presenting critical issues affecting Latinos in the United States, and showcasing Hispanic leaders at a local and national level,” said Maestas.

Since the Los Angeles-based blog is in English, it has positioned itself, along with other Hispanic blogs, as an alternative to the incendiary coverage of immigration and Latino affairs that is found in some traditional media in the United States.

Maestas, who works as an online editor for the University of California at Irvine, spends between six and 15 hours a week on her blog. She declined to say how many hits she gets a month, but LatinoPolitics has about 2,600 followers on Twitter.

Although her blog generates “a little” income, Maestas said it “wouldn’t be enough to live on.”

The satisfaction of her work is in “helping inform people and bringing attention to the issues people can’t always find in traditional media from a Latino perspective.”

That’s how the UC Irvine graduate in political science, who also has a master's degree in public policy from Claremont, describes it.

“My blog comes from the perspective of someone who has studied this, can analyze it, and has experience,” said Maestas. “I'm not an angry citizen ranting about politics.”

She added that “immigration issues affect a lot of English-speaking Latinos even though they’re outside of the immigrant experience because they know people or have friends who have gone through or are going through this process ... It’s an issue that affects the majority of Latinos in the United States, no matter how many generations they are removed from the immigration process.”

English or Spanish?
‘The majority of Latina bloggers are publishing bilingual content.’
- Elianne Ramos, LATISM

Experts agree that English seems to be the dominant language of Latino blogs in the United States. However, though it may be limited, there is still room for Spanish-language blogs.

Calderón notes that younger generations of Latinos in the U.S. are more accustomed to English; many of their parents lost the practice of speaking Spanish because it was looked down upon to speak Spanish outside of the home.

“I know people who don’t speak Spanish because as children, they were punished in school for speaking Spanish. Now there are millions of readers who speak the language, but not well, and feel uncomfortable when there are people who speak it well,” said Calderón.

Although experts agree that this phenomenon represents a cultural, and even spiritual loss, they recognized that it has created space for another phenomenon very peculiar to Hispanics in the U.S.: “Spanglish” and the inevitable back-and-forth of English to Spanish to English.

“People pick up sentences, sayings and words in Spanish and they love that. It makes them feel like it’s their own ... so in this country, they speak ‘un poquito’ (a little) Spanish, but not much,” Calderón said.

She added that “there is a space for Spanish-language media, but the reality is that fewer and fewer people are capable of speaking Spanish, reading it and understanding it 100 percent.”

According to a survey of women bloggers conducted last year by Latinos in Social Media (LATISM), 72 percent of their blogs had content in English and 69 percent had content in Spanish.

“This means the majority of Latina bloggers are publishing bilingual content,” said LATISM vice president Elianne Ramos.

“From my own observation, I think there’s more of a tendency to write in English, and I think that has a lot to do with the audience Latino blogs are targeting. If they deal with technology, politics or marketing, the target audience tends to speak or read more in English since a lot of young people and professionals use that language,” she added.

According to an AOL poll of 1,967 people in 2010, 46 percent of online Latinos speak English at home and prefer English-language media, while 23 percent prefer speaking Spanish at home and prefer Spanish-language media. Thirty-one percent speak both languages at home, and gravitate toward media in English.

What are Latina bloggers writing about?
‘It’s a very personal space that I use to share a little of my life.’
- Mariana Pérez, TheDomesticBuzz.com

A 2010 LATISM poll of 1,000 Latina bloggers found that 62.7 percent deal with issues of family and motherhood, while 54.4 percent deal with Latino issues. Technology, marketing, entertainment, art, cooking, beauty and fashion took a backseat to these issues.

Mariana Pérez is one of these Latina bloggers who focuses on family and judging by the numbers, she does it very well. Her blog, TheDomesticBuzz.com, receives about 15,000 hits a month and her Twitter account, OhMariana, has about 11,000 followers.

“It’s a very personal space that I use to share a little of my life – the adventure of being a mom, the issues that interest mothers and the products and services that a family uses every day,” Pérez said. “A lot of moms at home are looking for a place where they can share with other moms and talk about their kids, school and the difficulties we have.”

Pérez spends about three hours on her blog every day and during a phone interview with Al Día, she realized that she spends almost all day on Twitter. She said she’s connected through her laptop, her cell phone and she always carries her iPad in her purse.

Pérez credits the success of her blog to the time she’s spent on it since its launch in May 2008.

“To have a really successful blog takes a lot of time because no one is going to find it if you don’t promote it,” said Pérez. “You also have to visit other blogs and leave comments all the time.”

Pérez sometimes wondered if the time she devoted to her blog was really worth it, but after three years, she’s had the chance to work with several companies that have provided her with various opportunities and benefits.

Her influence has earned her sponsorships to attend conferences, all expense-paid trips, a swing and other toys her three and six-year old kids play with in the backyard, and even a washer and dryer. All because she reviews household products and toys for kids and shares the social media strategy that’s made her blog a success.

Her recommendations have even led toy manufacturers to make changes to their models before the final product goes on sale.

In addition to these benefits, Pérez receives between $50 and $100 for each sponsored posting, the banners displayed on her site, and even for participating in a “Twitter party,” a virtual meeting in which participants discuss a particular issue using “hashtags,” or labels, to distinguish their messages from millions of tweets.

On average, this mother, full-time housewife, expert blogger and liberal arts graduate, receives earnings of up to $600 a month working on her blog from her home in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. She warns that this isn’t a fixed income.

On the other hand, what she is gaining from her blog is priceless.

“‘Mommy bloggers’ are looking for friendships without leaving home. My friends are on Twitter and on blogs, and a lot people who comment on my blog have become my friends. Sometimes we talk on Skype and there are others that I’ve met in person,” Pérez said.

For a while, the 30-year-old Mexican American wasn’t sure if she should identify herself as Latina on her blog, fearing that this might limit her audience.

“I didn’t try to hide it, but I didn’t advertise it,” said Pérez, who now describes herself in her Twitter profile as, “Mom, blogger, Latina. Girl at heart ... and lover of all things related to social media.”

“I wasn’t part of the Latina bloggers until recently, but I started to talk with others on Twitter and now I'm part of that group. I feel comfortable sharing things about my culture with my readers who before I felt were going to exclude me for being Latina, and they like it, I feel that a lot of them want to learn.”

Another key to her success is perseverance. She says that when she stops posting for a couple of days, which doesn’t happen often, people stop visiting her blog.

“Sometimes I feel like taking a vacation, but you can’t,” Perez said. “A blog is like a growing child and sometimes you can’t control it; it’s like my third child, and if you don’t take care of it and spend time with it, it won’t develop.”