Déjà vu…NEPM and the Latino Community

Relationships between the Latino community and the region’s public media have not always been ideal. Despite the continuous growth of the Latino population in the region, our inclusion and participation in decision making processes that impact our community is still not what it should be. Here are some facts.

In February of 1980, the newly appointed general manager of WFCR 88.5 FM decided to cancel the program ¿Qué Tal, Amigos?, the station’s only program in Spanish. The widely popular show, co-produced and hosted by two Hispanics, Sonia Vives and Julio Torresoto, had been on the air for 10 years.

In January of 2007, two and a half decades after the ¿Qué Tal, Amigos? fiasco, the Latino community learned that the recently appointed administrator of WFCR 88.5 FM had made the decision to cancel the only Latino local show at the time, Tertulia. The equally popular program had replaced ¿Qué Tal, Amigos?

This new cancelation not only caught the Latino community by surprise but also opened old wounds. Once again, the administration of the public radio station had made a decision regarding programming without considering the preferences and needs of the Latino community. For more information about the cancellation of these two programs, please refer to our February 2007 edition OOPS… WFCR 88.5 Radio Did It Again!.

Moving forward to March of 2023 when the newly appointed manager of New England Public Media

(NEPM) announced the layoff of nearly 20% of its staff (full and part time) due to an ongoing financial crisis. New England Public Media is an alliance established in 2019 between New England Public Radio (WFCR 88.5) and WGBYTV.

Among those affected by the personnel cuts are the entire team of the weekly television show “Connecting Point” hosted by Zydalis Bauer. Zydalis Bauer had a long relationship with the Springfield-based television public media. In 2008, she began as an intern at WGBY’s Latino Youth Media Institute. She was then part of local productions and community engagement projects with the station. Later on, Zydalis became co-host of Presencia, the station’s first bilingual program. In 2019 she joined the Connecting Point team, becoming its host in 2021 as the first Latinx to host a prime time mainstream program. Another Latino casualty of the personnel cuts is Iohann Vega-Martínez, NEPM’s Media Lab Project Director. This project trained diverse innercity, middle school and high school students in the area of multi-platform storytelling and journalism. In January 2023, Iohann was one of three journalists from New England Public Media selected to participate in the inaugural 2022 New England Equity Reporting Fellowship.

These are just a few examples of how public communication media has repeatedly failed the Latino community. These most recent cuts constitute a serious setback to the relationship between NEPM and the community that they are supposed to serve.

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Founded in 2004 n Volume 19, No. 5 n April 2023

Editor Manuel Frau Ramos manuelfrau@gmail.com

413-320-3826

Assistant Editor Ingrid Estrany-Frau

Art Director Tennessee Media Design

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