Hispanic Neglect Is The Media's Dirty Little Secret
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Mimi Valdes Ryan has a tough job.
On Nov. 5, she became the top editor of Latina, a magazine and Internet operation, which is run by Latina Media Ventures and caters to Hispanic women.
The 37-year-old former editor of Vibe magazine has the weighty task of taking Latina to a new level of prominence. Valdes Ryan and her partners must compete with magazines like Vogue and Glamour for advertisers and readers.
"I want Latina to sit on the coffee table alongside these other women's magazines," she said.
In one major respect, Latina is typical of the media: Its primary market is young people. Latina is gearing its magazine and Internet properties to attract the eyeballs of the age group over which advertisers salivate.
In tune with her audience
Latina has picked an editor with the right background. A native New Yorker and graduate of New York University, Valdes Ryan has worked for The Source, Vibe and Blaze. The daughter of a Puerto Rican mother and a Cuban father, she understands the fashion and beauty concerns of her readers.
"They're looking for people who can inform, entertain and inspire them," she said. (We talked for more than an hour, and she used the word "inspire" several times.)
Valdes Ryan looks forward to conducting her own version of a focus group. She is willing to go into the streets of New York City and ask readers which prospective Latina covers they like better.
"Latinos are the most multicultural people on the planet, and I want to show that," she explains.
If hip-hop has become a catchphrase for the cultural and societal passions of her audience -- as rock-and-roll did for an earlier generation of Americans -- then Valdes Ryan is an ideal spokeswoman.
"Hip-hop is in my blood," she told me last month at the American Magazine Conference in Boca Raton, Fla. "I love it, love it, love it! When I started at Vibe, I was 'the hip-hop girl.' It was always, 'Ask Mimi, ask Mimi.' With Latina, our readers -- my gosh! -- they like everything!"
Ah, the times have changed. Valdes Ryan doesn't go out clubbing and listening to new music as often as she once did. Plus, she has another reason to stay home now, too: She married New York City firefighter Kaseem Ryan only two months ago.
"I go out, but only every now and then," she sighed nostalgically. "Hip-hop's 24/7."
Finding balance
Valdes Ryan faces an editor's classic dilemma. Can she balance her creative journalistic instincts and her publisher's commercial goals? She's jazzed to find out.
When I asked about her challenge, she likened her current task to one that she encountered at Vibe. She and her colleagues found a way to make a story about a much-publicized celebrity seem unique.
"A story on Jay-Z in Vibe was different than one in Newsweek or Rolling Stone," she said earnestly. "We knew his history and the path he took. We could get access to more kinds of information. Other publications didn't have the history."
A change in Vibe's ownership ultimately led to her departure. "I used to joke that I was going to be at Vibe till they threw me out the window -- and that's exactly what happened," she said. Under her leadership, Vibe became well known in the publishing world and was synonymous with inventiveness and style.
Valdes Ryan dares to think big, a prerequisite for every top editor. Latina's circulation stands at about 500,000. She added that its pass-along rate brings the total to more than 3 million readers. Its Web site gets roughly 250,000 unique visitors a month. Valdes Ryan is anything but satisfied with those numbers.
"It should be bigger," she said. "There is so much potential to have more of an impact, especially online. I want Latina to be the 'must' destination for Latinas."
Snub
When it comes to impact, the ways in which the American media have ignored the Hispanic audience are to numerous to count. The latest snub can be found in Rolling Stone's 40th anniversary issue. (Yes, it is yet another installment.)
Rolling Stone interviewed 25 prominent individuals about the changing times, yet not one of them is synonymous with the Hispanic-American community. This sort of neglect happens all the time in the media, so it shouldn't come as a shock.
Thing is, Rolling Stone -- and the rest of the media that undertake similar sweeping stories -- should be keenly aware that the Hispanic population is among the fastest-growing ethnic groups in the U.S. It's hard to imagine that Rolling Stone couldn't have found at least one representative to speak incisively on the subject.
"One of the areas we experience the greatest shortfall in the mainstream media is the concept of 'mainstreaming,'" Rafael Olmeda told me the other day. He is the assistant city editor of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., as well as the president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
Olmeda continued in a frustrated but measured tone: "Are we included in stories that are not about ethnicity? Tax policy? Health care? Local veterans? We're part of the American story, my friend. The problem with the larger media is that when they look at Hispanic issues, they look at exactly that: Hispanic issues. Is that fair to us? We have been in this country for years. They only care about Hispanics when 'Hispanic issues' are involved."
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FRIDAY STORY OF THE WEEK: "" by Jack Fuller (Chicago Tribune, Nov. 13): An intriguing look at the political views of General Electric , which owns left-leaning cable-television operation MSNBC. The network recently tried to hire Rosie O'Donnell, a move that triggered a blizzard of publicity as well as speculation about whether MSNBC wanted to be the counterpoint to Fox News. (Fox is owned by News Corp. , which is in the process of acquiring Dow Jones . Dow Jones owns MarketWatch, publisher of this column.)
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By Jon Friedman