CALÓ News expands coverage beyond California to the Southwest

If ever there has been a more poignant period for bridging the information gap that the Latino communities of the U.S. are subject to, this is it.

Our community is front and center every election cycle. We are talked about, our livelihoods and concerns discussed by every major candidate and on every major news outlet, our priorities analyzed and dissected — our size, not our rich and diverse cultures, leading those conversations, yet our access to legible and digestible information in languages we understand decreases every year.

The current administration, set on targeting immigrant communities, demolishing equity and inclusion initiatives while devaluing the significance of multilingual and multicultural diversity, further poses a threat to accessing that information.

Today, the Latino Media Collaborative (LMC) embarks on a journey to help bridge that gap for Latinos in the Southwest via its central initiative, CALÓ News, offering coverage via a Latino lens that highlights people, policy impact, resources and solutions in service of the largest demographic in the Southwest.

Early in my academic journey, I decided to become a journalist because I wasn’t seeing the stories of my people from Fresnillo, Zacatecas, Mexico, who at the time were fleeing the area post-2006 when then-president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa initiated his war on drugs that triggered a violent response on behalf of numerous cartels, impacting my family and countless others. The repercussions of that offense left a trail of forced disappearances, countless lives lost and corrupt officials who reap the benefits of impunity.

Too often, we find that same lack of coverage in U.S. media when it comes to people of Latino descent, where headlines focus on issues and hardships, discounting the thriving enterprises led by this community. The annual U.S. Latino GDP report, authored by UCLA’s Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture (CESLAC) and Cal Lutheran’s Center for Economic Research & Forecasting, found that this demographic hit $4.1 trillion in 2023, showing once again that it equates to the fifth-largest GDP in the world.

Latinos are the fastest-growing demographic in the U.S. Between 2022 and 2023, the population accounted for over 70% of the overall growth across the country, according to the U.S. Census.

In the Southwest, specifically our core areas of coverage, the Latino population represents the largest racial group — 49% in New Mexico, 32% in Arizona and 30% in Nevada. 

An analysis of the area’s media landscape, conducted by LMC, found that over three dozen Latino media outlets serve over 4.4 million Latinos across Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico, equating to roughly one outlet per 116,000 Latinos. Comparatively, an estimated 284 media outlets throughout the Southwest provide coverage to approximately 13 million residents.

Our move in expanding coverage beyond California by prioritizing the voices of the immigrant and Latino populations in the southwestern parts of the country falls in line with our mission to leverage the power of Latino and community news media to impact policy, change narratives and promote civic engagement.

The Latino Media Collaborative has, since its founding in 2019, prioritized pushing the advancement of Latino-led and owned newsrooms, creating a network of media partners, facilitating capacity building among them and advocating for legislative solutions to support the ever-changing ethnic media landscape.

My experience in the news industry has led me to understand how volatile it can be for those of us who choose to tell stories of our communities, especially Latinos and people of color, when there is a lack of systemic support from the industry and the states in which we operate.

As we expand our coverage through CALÓ News and grow our network of newsroom partners, our goal is to develop strategies and solutions that will benefit the industry as a whole, because a news organization that does not prioritize coverage for and by our Latino communities cannot expect to remain sustainable.

Join us as we push toward a more Latino-inclusive media landscape in California, the Southwest and beyond.