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Money Talks, But Does It Speak Amharic?
Dereje Desta, who owns, edits and writes for Ze Ethiopia, a newspaper for Washington's Ethiopian community, at a reception for local ethnic media.
(By Bill O'leary -- The Washington Post)
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There's no question that the buying power of minorities and immigrants is significant and growing -- they spent about $1.5 trillion in 2004, according to a report by the University of Georgia's Selig Center for Economic Growth. But as their disposable income grows, people tend to join the mainstream and consume mainstream media. So many ethnic media outlets have begun to publish and broadcast not only in their native languages but also in English, hoping to appeal to older and younger generations.
The huge and still-growing Latino community is hefty enough to attract big-business advertisers for Spanish-language broadcast networks and radio corporations. Last year, "El Zol," WLZL (99.1 FM), owned by Infinity Broadcasting, entered Washington's radio market as the first major Spanish radio broadcaster, signaling that Latino listeners had become a serious draw for corporate America.
Smaller ethnic media outlets rely instead on their own communities.
Nhan Vo, executive director of Vietnamese American Television, says almost all local Vietnamese immigrants watch the weekly program, which is also broadcast on DirecTV's Saigon Broadcasting Television Network. He calls on the community to support the broadcast through an annual sponsorship drive that correlates with the celebration of Tet, the Vietnamese new year that falls around late January or early February. Last year, he and his volunteer staff raised $10,000 to keep the network running.
At the reception last week, Aman and Samira Feda, the husband-and-wife team who own the Afghan magazine Zeba, handed out their latest issue. Hammasa Kohistani, a beauty queen of Afghan heritage, graced the cover. Aman, a mortgage broker, is bankrolling the publication for a year.
"We always felt we were the only ones doing this, [but] you see people in other communities struggling with the same thing," Samira said. "They are dealing with the same issues."
John Wilson III, publisher of Access Monthly, an online magazine targeted at local minority politicians and workers on Capitol Hill, made a plea on behalf of the media leaders a few minutes before the reception ended. He'd like to publish a paper version, to create a product people can hold onto and pass around, but he doesn't have the money to do it.
"We need investors, and we need finances," he said. "This is not the time to fake the funk. The print bill is going to come due. Help us with some money."
