“You are Cordially Invited to the Colorado Ethnic News Media Exchange!”
Last Wednesday on 23rd, the city of Aurora’s Office of International Immigrant Affairs hosted a meaningful gathering called ‘Colorado Ethnic News Media Exchange.’ This event invited numerous representatives of different ethnic groups’ media companies in Colorado which facilitated vigorous discussions about Coloradan news media’s future.
Coming from so many different backgrounds, participants endeavored to share ideas how to collaborate better and intersect on different issues. One of the representatives raised her voice by saying “We should share more information to be more powerful. Combined and collaborated, we can be very powerful. Staying quiet and isolated, we cannot be effective.”
“Even on the revenue side, Amazon does not want to buy 50 ads. However, if you have a shared ad or even a platform that crosses all of the organization and different media that represent various ethnic communities, more and more advertisers will come to us,” said Milete Tigray, a journalist from Media House. In addition to this, Annie Guo Vandan, the owner of Asian Avenue said “I think everything starts with coming together more and more. And this is why today we might have opened a new chapter for better communication and collaboration among different ethnic news media. I think the city of Aurora has been very supportive and thinking more creatively as a group we can greatly maximize our potential and influence in Colorado.”
The group also discussed the future of printed newspaper and how the paradigm is shifting to ‘digital-oriented’ and ‘social media-oriented.’ Of course, every participant had different opinion about the next milestone of news media, but there was a general consensus that the paradigm is shifting especially after the pandemic. Many people adjusted themselves to the smartphones for their own convenience during the pandemic and even older generation takes advantages of the smartphones and digital news compared to the past.
In fact, we have been witnessing this trend for the last five years. Newspapers were closing, inflation is out of control, some were going to digital-only editions, and print was continuing to decline. Participants agreed how they bear responsibilities as a media to adjust to the new digital paradigm and ironically, some news media succeed even more as digital-only media. Statistically proven, this is because the new generation dominates the new flow of ‘digital readers’ and the new generation understands the importance of marketing and do now hesitate to spend money for ‘good advertisement’ and ‘better marketing strategy.’
In fact, other statistics show how teenagers have no interest beyond anything they read on Instagram or Snapchat. However, polling shows that teenagers today are more interested in news than any previous teenage generation. They understand more than those who came before that what happens halfway around the world can greatly affect their lives. This is why many news media around the world do not underestimate the fact that the main audience of the news is no longer older generation but it is the younger generation – and they almost do not read printed newspaper. This does set a guideline or at least gives everybody an idea of how next milestone our ethnic news media in Colorado should also be focusing on: ‘going digital.’
“The event was designed to strengthen connections within the Colorado ethnic news media,” said Min Soo Song, the Community Outreach Coordinator of Office of International Immigrant Affairs for the city of Aurora. Last but not least, many leaders from different communities actively shared their best practices and resources from the past, promised to collaborate and work together to enhance the media environment for small ethnicities in Colorado.
