Reader Advocate: Spanish ads appeal to growing niche

This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2008, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Some of our readers were upset this week with Spanish-language advertising that was delivered in their copies of The Salt Lake Tribune. This reader typified some comments:

"Included in my morning paper of May 1, was a pamphlet advertising Wal-Mart. The real problem is this ad was written completely in Spanish.

"My opinion is that the majority of people in this country that speak Spanish-only are here illegally, thus I am highly offended that you are catering to these people at my expense. If your paper intends to continue in this manner, I feel I no longer need to be a subscriber."

While subscribers with this opinion are welcome to take the paper, they did not represent the majority of the calls I got. Most folks who called - especially after the Close-Up section for West Valley had only Spanish-language ads on Friday - were more confused than angry.

For instance the Harmons grocery ad in Close-Up advertised productos Pepsi or Pepsi products for $5.99 a cube of 24 cans, plus maiz blanco or white corn at 3 ears por $.99. The slogan for Harmons at the bottom of the page was in English: "We're not normal, we're Harmons."

Well, apparently we were not normal on Friday, either.

It looks like we got into a se habla Espanol mode. That can be a problem for a newspaper that is written in English - and sold as such to people who read English.

According to Brent Low, CEO of Newspaper Agency Corp. (the company that prints, sells the ads and distributes both The Tribune and the Deseret Morning News), the Spanish language advertising experiment was based on the fact that census figures indicate almost one of every four people in West Valley City is Hispanic.

And, we need a way to reach those readers.

To understand today's newspaper market, let's look at a few realities:

* Newspapers have seen declining circulation during the past decade;

* Small, free car sales and home sales magazines have cut into valuable classified ads;

* More and more young people are looking to the Internet for news and information;

* In order to survive, newspapers must find successful niche products - papers and Web sites that serve special populations, such as Spanish-speaking immigrants;

* Immigrants - especially those who speak Spanish - are becoming a larger portion of the Wasatch Front population;

* One of the best business principles is this: Find a need and fill it.

For some time, we have published Fronteras, a Spanish language weekly tabloid that had news from Latin America (mostly Mexico) and had four pages in the center featuring articles from The Salt Lake Tribune that were translated into Spanish.

We figured we could do a better job of filling this need, so we stopped Fronteras.

As Deputy Editor Tim Fitzpatrick explains:

"In the next month or so we will launch Ahora Utah, a free Spanish-language weekly newspaper. Ahora Utah is a full-size [broadsheet] publication that will include locally written articles on community news, sports and entertainment. It will also have national and international news from Spanish-language wire services. It will be available at selected supermarkets and other public gathering spots. The launch date has not been set, but it's expected to be in June."

Obviously the ads in this new publication will be in Spanish.

It takes a while for immigrants to learn English. What we speak as natives, English is a complicated language when compared to Spanish or French - both of which have fewer irregular verbs and are not a combination of Latin and Germanic influence.

The first generation that moves to America learns some basic English and tends to speak the native language at home. Their children learn English in school and speak their parents' tongue at home. By the third generation, the immigrant families are fluent in English and speak little of the native tongue at home.

It takes a while. My grandfathers spoke Gaelic, German and French when they got here.

While this process unfolds, the immigrant families need to buy goods and services in the marketplace. Spanish-language ads make this process simpler for the many immigrants we have from Latin America. Ahora Utah will make the process of making decisions about purchases easier.

Until the new publication hits the streets, however, Spanish language ads will not appear again in Close-Up or other Salt Lake Tribune sections.

---

* The Reader Advocate's phone number is 801-257-8782. Write to the Reader Advocate, The Salt Lake Tribune, 90 S. 400 West, Suite 700, Salt Lake City, Utah 84101. reader.advocate@sltrib.com.