Política Pop

BY JOSÉ MANUEL SIMIÁN

Oh, what a week last one was for the Hispanic press of New York City. NY al Día, a new daily, appeared on the streets, and fellow blogger Juan Manuel Benítez put out the best (and only?) series analyzing Spanish newspapers I have seen on New York television.

That last praise comes from a friend, which may raise doubts among some of you. (Faithful readers of this blog, though, know that we aren’t afraid to fight.) But it’s not like anybody else will praise or say anything about those stories: we don’t exactly have an overflow of commentators on Latino media, not even on blogs (correct me if I’m wrong); not even after the Mayor decided it was essential to use his Spanish almost every time he has a presser. So here goes nothing, some reflections on the events of last week for those few freaks like me that actually care about (and/or make a living out of) Spanish media.

Of course, the existence of NY al Día is a positive development, as is its desire to create a healthy competition with El Diario. The problems arise from the General Manager, Juan Carlos Sánchez’s recent interviews with Benítez.  And taking into account the statements of his former boss, the ex Editor of the disappeared Hoy, Javier Castaño, the chances of having modern and promising newspapermen in Spanish-speaking New York seem terribly slim. (Most of NY al Día‘s team comes from Hoy.)

For starters, appearing in a recap of Benitez’s series, at NY1 Noticias’ Pura Política, Sánchez didn’t seem to have a clear business model. And, yes, I am aware that the newspaper crisis shutting down newsrooms accross the country is precisely about the death of the old business model. Yet, it was stunning that Sánchez’s best answer for the reasoning behind charging $0.40 for his product instead of giving it away for free was “because quality needs to have a price.” (Consumers would disagree: “Show me the quality and I’ll show you the money,” they’d probably say.)

Sánchez went even further with this price-as-value theory, claiming that the dissapearance of Hoy was caused in part because of it becoming a freebie, not because of the scandal of its inflated circulation numbers. Which takes us to the next worrisome issue: Sánchez could not account for 6,000 newspapers that seemed to be missing from the “official” 14,000 copies on the streets. Could history repeat itself so quickly?

But enough with worrying about paper and ink. After all, some of those problems will correct themselves soon (saving some trees along the way) thanks to the Internet. The most vexing problem: Sánchez and his former boss seem to be completely unaware of the current state of affairs between the newspaper industry and that online thing. I would even take things a step further and infer that they are convinced Latino newspapers share none of the concerns of, say, The New York Times.

A week after its release, NY al Día‘s only presence online is a banner announcing its imminent launch. “We don’t believe that the Internet is the first priority of the Hispanic community,” said Sánchez.

Here is the apparent strategy, then: to put this $0.40 piece of paper in the hands of Latinos so they can read, for instance, the results of yesterday’s sports games!

I understand that it’s easy to assume Latinos to which these publications aim at may be old school. They may prefer to buy the newspaper to read it on the bus on their way to work; maybe not all of them are crazy about reading news online as of now. But do they seriously believe that those “old school” Latinos are the only market out there? Do they really see NY al Día as a media outlet free from the 24-hour news cycle? Are these people thinking that in a few years, when Blackberries, iPhones or other devices become cheaper, relevant readers will not want to read their news digitally?

Statements made by Castaño in his appearance on the reporting series and Pura Política were clear in this Internet-denial direction. According to him, “the Internet is not the solution to the problems of the Hispanic press in this country.”

This phobia —or lack of understanding— of the online world seems to run even deeper than love for the printed page. In other statements, Castaño suggested that publishing news online somehow goes against the “old school” style of journalism he claims to be a part of. Furthermore, this high-quality journalism would return “soon,” when “people realize they have to pay for the [news on the] Internet…. [Then] they will go back to paying $0.50 for their [printed] newspaper.”

This confusion between the medium and the content is troublesome, akin to Sánchez’s suggestion that charging for a print copy amounts to quality in its pages.

I don’t expect every Hispanic journalist to follow and try to decipher Jay Rosen’s feed on the future of the media via Twitter. (It’s free, anyway, folks…) What I do expect of serious journalists is an impartial and objective look at the world changing around them. But something in Sánchez and Castaño’s statements makes me think of the movie Sixth Sense when, at the end of the film, the main character suddenly realizes he has been dead all along.

BY JUAN MANUEL BENÍTEZ

The election is seven months away, but Michael Bloomberg is already showing off his Spanish skills in his first television commercial of the 2009 campaign. It’s a very similar spot to the one he opened his campaign with in 2005. He has already spent more than three million dollars of his own pocket this year in his effort to stay four more years in office. He is ready to spend 80.

Why can he run for a third time? At his request, the New York City Council changed the term limits law last year to allow public elected officials to serve for a third term. The Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-Independent said that would give New Yorkers more choice, but so far, only two Democrats seem to dare challenge him.

One of them is not Congressman Anthony Weiner. He decided to take a step back last month and wait until the summer to make a final decision. That hasn’t stopped the Bloomberg campaign from calling people to test which attacks would work better against him. “Nasty politics,” says Weiner about this type of survey that people from his camp described to The New York Times as push-polling, a technique used to disseminate negative information about an opponent. The Times reports that people were asked whether their “views of Mr. Weiner would be altered if he or she knew of certain problems involving Mr. Weiner, from missing votes in Congress to having difficulty keeping staff to accepting campaign donations from foreign fashion models.”

One thing is clear: no matter how high his approval ratings are or the fact that most New Yorkers I’ve spoken to (many of them African American) think the job will still be his after November, Bloomberg is determined to take nothing for granted. Last week he got endorsements from labor groups and Black religious leaders, stepping into another candidate’s turf, New York City Comptroller Bill Thompson.

We don’t know if the Bloomberg campaign is testing attacks on Thompson. There might be no need. Few people know who he is anyway.

BY JOSÉ MANUEL SIMIÁN

Although, upon hearing the title, some quickly speculated that “Feel A Change Comin’ On,” one of the tracks on the forthcoming Bob Dylan album (“Together Through Life“, out April 28),  would have something to do with the Age of Obama, nothing has ever been that literal in Planet Zimmerman. Now that the soul-inflected song has been released through news websites (change we can really believe in), that theory has been dispelled by Dylan’s grainy voice: “Well life is for love / And they say that love is blind / If you want to live easy / Baby, pack your clothes with mine.”

Things being circular, nonetheless,  in the last installment of Dylan’s long interview with Bill Flanagan, the usually evasive songwriter speaks at length about the President:

BILL FLANAGAN: What struck you about him?

Well, a number of things. He’s got an interesting background. He’s like a fictional character, but he’s real. First off, his mother was a Kansas girl. Never lived in Kansas though, but with deep roots. You know, like Kansas bloody Kansas. John Brown the insurrectionist. Jesse James and Quantrill. Bushwhackers, Guerillas. Wizard of Oz Kansas. I think Barack has Jefferson Davis back there in his ancestry someplace. And then his father. An African intellectual. Bantu, Masai, Griot type heritage – cattle raiders, lion killers. I mean it’s just so incongruous that these two people would meet and fall in love. You kind of get past that though. And then you’re into his story. Like an odyssey except in reverse.

In what way?

First of all, Barack is born in Hawaii. Most of us think of Hawaii as paradise – so I guess you could say that he was born in paradise.

And he was thrown out of the garden.

Not exactly. [...]

[Complete interview at bobdylan.com, including Dylan's explanation of why the political world came to Barack Obama, and his theory about good and bad presidents.]

BY JOSÉ MANUEL SIMIÁN

A few things have happened since this blog was interrupted last September:

Yes, of course, Barack Obama was elected president, and the Age of Hope started in the middle of an economic landscape so bleak that the days when we cared about things such as the geographical lacunae of Sarah Palin or McCain’s computer illiteracy seem like a frivolous joke — a thing of the Bush years.

And, yes, as you know the press has entered a downward spiral, out of which it will emerge as something that no one —not even those who are thinking hard about it— can figure out. A death blow was given to two newspapers that were dear to this blog: The New York Sun and Hoy. The former, because it always gave us an excuse to start a fight; the latter, in part because it was one of two newspapers published in Spanish in New York City, but mostly because, as time went by, it became a study in the disintegration of a daily. (In yet another sign of the times, the non-existent outlet still claims to live online, under the shadow of the lazy monopoly of El Diario.)

Only two really positive things have happened for the Spanish press in the past six months. Surprisingly, Hispanic media seems to have grown in stature despite dramatic shrinking in actual output.  This phenomena might have been propelled by the economic crisis, the political savviness of Barack Obama (who is still in campaign mode when speaking to Latino outlets), or even Mayor Bloomberg’s insistence on interrupting his pressers to practice his fumbling Spanish.   (The notion of “Ethnic press” seems to have been more present in the first few months of 2009 than ever before.) Second, El Diario scored big by leading the outrage of minorities against the policies of appointed State Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand. When the legislator finally hinted at changing her position on immigration (among other things), the Spanish press suddenly seemed to regain muscle lost long ago to show business and easy pandering.

So here we are, in the middle of the most unpredictable time our generation has ever experienced; still in New York, still trying to explain the world from the perspective of Latino immigrants. Call this a Latino blog, Ethnic Press, or whatever you come up with, but we feel that the message and the need to get it across are more urgent than ever. Our Spanish is alive and well, but in order to reach the real America —multicultural, multilingual— from now on we will be writing in English.

The game certainly has changed.