Media production in a transnational setting: Three models of immigrant journalism

Introduction

In South Florida, the counties of Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach have some of the largest immigrant populations in the United States, as a percentage of their overall population (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010). When combined with the international diversity of these communities, the region presents an amalgam of cultures, languages, food, and national symbols – and, as a result, the landscape is dotted with community media outlets providing these communities with news and information that is culturally relevant to their communities and provides important connections to both home and host countries (Shumow, 2010, 2012). Among those immigrant groups in South Florida that have grown most rapidly in recent years is the Venezuelan community, whose numbers increased significantly after the election of Hugo Chávez in 1999 (Census: South Americans more than double Florida presence, 2011; Semple, 2008). Alongside this growth has been the parallel growth of Venezuelan community media in South Florida (Ocando, 2009). While these media are focused on local issues, the mediated communication being produced and distributed among its members is also transnational in scope (Shumow, 2012).

There are myriad and complex social processes at work when immigrant audiences, buffeted by the forces of modernity and globalization, produce and consume mediated communication (Appadurai, 1996; Christiansen, 2004; Georgiou, 2006, 2007; Karim, 2003; King and Wood, 2001; Soruco, 1996). Among the theoretical outcomes that emerge from these processes is “glocalization” – a complex merging of what would traditionally be considered “local” with that which is “global” – which often manifests in the identity of these deterritorialized communities (Kraidy, 1999; Morley, 2000; Ong, 1999; Robins and Aksoy, 2005). Additionally, there is a wide body of literature dedicated to the role that ethnic minority media play in the development of community identity (Deuze, 2006; Hollander, Stappers and Jankowski, 2002; Riggins, 1992; Tsagarousianou, 2002). One of the areas that remain under-investigated, however, is an attempt to describe and explain more clearly the motivations and professional guidelines that help to shape the work of the producers of this media. As has been put forth by other scholars working with this field (Benson, 2006; Deuze, 2005; Hughes, 2006; McNair, 1998), these are essential sociological elements that must remain as the center of focus for researchers of journalistic practices.

Guided by the methods of grounded theory, this study addresses this gap through an empirical, qualitative investigation into the practices of Venezuelan journalists in South Florida. The results of this inquiry provide a more complete picture of global journalism in transnational contexts in the digital media era through the recognition of the complexities inherent in the work of immigrant journalists. It also offers new contributions to theories of immigrant assimilation and provides an updated framework for understanding the production of Spanish-language immigrant media in the United States.

Three distinct models of immigrant journalism – Oppositional, Market-driven/hybrid, and Immigrant/community – are conceptualized as the outcomes of the work of the journalists interviewed for this study. These models are presented as a heuristic tool for drawing out the most important variables that inform and shape the work of these journalists and their production of transnational media spaces, a concept that builds on the idea of the social spaces connecting populations across borders, but focuses particularly on how these spaces are produced and modified through media and communication. In this sense, while the models themselves describe journalistic practices, they also help to inform and better conceptualize the different forms that immigrant media can take on as immigrant communities develop over time.

Karim (2003: 5) has written that the places where migration and global media meet are the “diasporic site(s)” that form the “cultural border between the country of origin and the country of residence.” Understanding these cultural sites and how they are created is a key outcome of this investigation. The variables that shape the work of these journalists include the context of departure and arrival, the unique role that ideology plays in the formation of their work, and the inherent transnational nature of these media outlets that allows them to shift their focus depending on the demands of international events and the needs of local audiences. The discussion of these models of the work of immigrant journalists and the resulting media spaces also helps to uncover some of the complexities inherent in transnational migration that challenge traditional, linear notions of immigrant assimilation and acculturation and recognizes the distinct role that mediated communication plays in the lives of 21st century immigrants.

Methods

This investigation and the resulting analysis and theoretical conclusions emerged out of a larger, long-term study looking at the production and consumption of immigrant media among Venezuelans in South Florida, based around a series of in-person interviews conducted between 2009 and 2010. In order to gather a sufficient number of participants (see Table 1 for a complete list of media outlets, language, and formats), snowball sampling was used to make primary and secondary contacts, an effort that resulted in 34 in-depth, semi-structured interviews and over 500 pages of transcripts. Because there is a scarcity of similar research, a grounded theory inquiry, defined as “a systemic, inductive, and comparative approach for conducting inquiry for the purpose of constructing theory” (Bryant and Charmaz, 2007a: 1), was used to investigate the work of Venezuelan journalists in South Florida.

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Table 1.

Media outlets, formats and language(s) used by the participants in their work.

Media outlet	Format	Language
RadioNexx.com	Internet radio	Spanish
Agenda Latina	Newspaper	Spanish
Venezuela Sin Mordaza	Newspaper	Spanish
Venezuelanawareness.com	Website	Spanish/English
Patriciapoleo.com	Website	Spanish
Venezuela en la Mira	Television	Spanish
Miami en la Mira	Magazine	Spanish
Sehablavenezolano.com	Blog	Spanish
Venezuela al Día	Newspaper	Spanish
El Venezolano	Newspaper	Spanish
Actualidad 1020	Radio	Spanish
Ciudad Doral Newspaper	Newspaper	Spanish/English
Doral News	Newspaper	Spanish/English
Columnaestilos.com	Blog	Spanish/English
Conexiones	Magazine	Spanish
Veintiseven	Magazine	Spanish

An axial qualitative coding approach was used to analyze the interviews in order to create the models outlined below, with the assistance of the qualitative software package NVivo as an organizational, analytical and modeling tool. This process took on a fluid nature throughout the analysis, as the constant comparison method (Bryant and Charmaz, 2007b: 607) of moving back and forth between data, categories, and findings, along with a continuing interaction and dialogue with existing literature, led to an evolution of theoretical findings. A peer reviewer was asked to read a sampling of transcripts as well as the written description of these models in order to peer-check the findings, which led to new insights as well as slight adjustments to the models to account for differences in perception.

Three models of immigrant journalism

These models are presented with the recognition that while this group shares elements in common – profession, nationality, culture, geography – there are key differences in their backgrounds and how they approach their work as journalists within an immigrant community. It is these differences that lend themselves to the creation of three distinct models of journalistic practice. The models also represent a spectrum regarding levels of connectivity to Venezuela versus connections to their community in South Florida; occupational ideologies that range from a balanced approach to journalism, to one that is politically driven; and the varying immigration experiences of the participants regarding their context of departure from Venezuela, whether they were forced from the country either as a direct outcome of their work or an ideological opposition to Chávez versus a voluntary departure for reasons unrelated to politics, such as economic motivations, family ties, job relocation, etc. It is important to note that these models should not be seen as representing separate silos; there is in fact considerable overlap between the models, as will be seen in the analysis below. The three models of immigrant journalism are conceptualized as follows:

“A burning candle”: Oppositional model

In 2004, Paul Sfeir, who moved to the United States from Venezuela in 2001, decided to launch an Internet radio station called RadioNEXX. Sfeir’s family had emigrated from Chile to Venezuela during the presidency of Salvador Allende, and he grew up hearing about what his family had lost under that government. By the time he moved to the United States, three years after the election of Hugo Chávez, Sfeir had already become ideologically opposed to the direction in which he believed the country was headed. “Look, first we left a communist government in Chile,” he said. “And now I have to leave because of a communist government in Venezuela” (personal communication with the author). ²

Sfeir had worked in the broadcast media in Venezuela and felt there was a dearth of coverage on the situation in Venezuela among media in South Florida. Looking for an outlet, Sfeir launched RadioNEXX. The radio station quickly became popular among the exile community as well as for Internet listeners inside Venezuela, especially during moments of political and social unrest, such as the constitutional referendum in December of 2007 to abolish presidential term limits. According to Sfeir, during that vote, RadioNEXX received 4000 phone calls and eight million website hits in a 24-hour period.

The reach and impact of RadioNEXX, because it used the Internet as its platform and opened up a phone line for reports from Venezuela as well as callers in South Florida, became completely transnational in scope. This media phenomenon was reflected in the seamless transitions that Sfeir and others made in referring to Venezuelans that were both here and there. RadioNEXX’s programming and audience represented a blurring of borders that vexed Venezuelan government monitors, who were very interested in finding the source of these vehement opposition voices but whose powers are territorially bound.

Other oppositional journalists echoed this transnational experience. Patricia Poleo, a prominent exiled journalist who continues to publish her column in Venezuela, often used information from highly placed contacts in the military and government:

I write about things in Venezuela that are so up to the minute that they still think I’m there and continue to look for me…I think this has been, of all my professional successes, the most important. That they keep recognizing me there in Venezuela…even though I’m not physically there.

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Figure 1.

Spectrum of influences shaping models of immigrant journalism.

The simultaneity inherent in the work of Poleo and the hosts on RadioNEXX is illustrative of the time–space compression that is a defining hallmark of globalization.

It was also a key element in the mental models of the work of these immigrant journalists, especially those within the oppositional model of journalism. These connections appeared to create an audience in the minds of these producers that exists simultaneously in Venezuela and the United States, a phenomenon reflected repeatedly in the comments offered up during the interviews. As Luis Ortíz, who had a political program on RadioNEXX, explained, in the case of their media outlet, technology had facilitated these connections: “Why the Internet? Well, first because it is important to us that the majority of people who listen to us are in Venezuela. And those of us who are creating the programming, the majority can’t go to Venezuela for political reasons.”

However, RadioNEXX often had to negotiate a complex political economy, efforts that are a defining characteristic of the oppositional model of immigrant journalism. Despite the station’s popularity during moments of crisis in Venezuela, Sfeir and his supporters were unable to find a sustainable economic model to keep the station functioning. Often, advertisers were wary of aligning themselves with journalists who had such an ideological bent to their programming, conscious of the sensitivities of cross-national implications that could hurt their interests either in the United States, Venezuela, or both.

Many of the media outlets in the oppositional model went through moments of popularity but were unable to sustain their audiences over the long term. Edgard Paredes, a radio announcer who for a time published a weekly newspaper in Miami called Venezuela Sin Mordaza (Venezuela Ungagged), an oppositional, politically oriented outlet, had a similar experience: “…there were clients that were telling me, ‘Hey, what a good newspaper. I like it, you are doing good work, but I have businesses in Venezuela and they might be affected if I support you.’”

Downing (2003: 628) has noted this problem of economic sustainability in his writing on alternative media and their audiences: “…public support is unmistakably tangible during a period of acute political contention, but misleads the activists into seeing it as more widespread and durable than it is, so that they take it for granted beyond the point they should.” This often appeared to be the case in the oppositional model, particularly with RadioNEXX, where the producers saw a real explosion of popularity and attention to their efforts. The producers came away with a sense of being an important source of alternative information, but were not able to develop a long-term strategy for audience-building and economic stability.

There were elements of personal sacrifice in nearly all of the stories told by oppositional journalists, from having to flee the country, as in the case of Poleo; economic sacrifice, as with Sfeir, who sold his house to keep RadioNEXX running; or the experience of Roger Vivas, an exiled politician and AM Radio host, who, as he explained, made very little for his work: “I really have to struggle here. I make 10 dollars an hour and my checks are never more than $500. I live in an efficiency apartment.” Another member of this group had recently been evicted from his apartment and was sleeping on a friend’s sofa; yet another interviewee’s marriage fell apart during the process of seeking exile in the United States. These personal experiences combined with the underlying political elements inherent in the work of the oppositional journalists helped to create the anti-Chávez rhetoric that was the defining political characteristic binding this group together.

Finally, within a larger historical and societal context, even though this group’s rhetoric focused on the Chávez government, this model should not be seen as unique to this particular immigrant group and their circumstances. In the United States, some of the earliest examples of Spanish-language immigrant media were produced by political exiles. In New York City, early Puerto Rican newspapers called for independence from Spain (Fitzpatrick, 1987), while Cuban journalist Felix Varela begin pressing for Cuban independence from Spain in the mid-1800s in the pages of El Habanero, which was published in Philadelphia but circulated in Cuba. This was followed by the work of José Martí and the publication of La Patria in New York (Kanellos, 2000). There is also the case of Mexicans writing about the Mexican revolution from Texas and California (Cortés, 1987; Kanellos, 2000), which eventually led to the founding of one of the country’s oldest Spanish-Language newspapers, La Opinión in Los Angeles. Contemporarily, Hamid Naficy (1993) has written eloquently about the media produced by and for the Iranian diaspora, while similar scholarship on exile media has been produced on Tibetans in exile (Dukes, 2006), Burmese democratic efforts in Sweden (Pidduck, 2012), and, of most significance to this inquiry, the use and production of exilic media by Cubans living in South Florida (e.g. Bardach, 2002; Larson, 2006; Soruco, 1996).

“Finding a balance”: Market-driven/hybrid model

Following on the oppositional model, and drawing on similar elements, the market-driven/hybrid model is defined by these journalists’ search for a balance between focusing on Venezuela when necessary, especially during moments of crisis, but also making sure that events in Venezuela do not become their sole focus. This was an economic decision as much as a professional one, with the recognition that focusing too intently on the Venezuelan community would limit their reach among wider immigrant groups. There was an effort among the members of this group, not to avoid Venezuela politics or Chávez completely, but to place more of an emphasis on life in their new country, on what it means to be an Hispanic immigrant in the United States, and to reach out to the other Spanish-speaking immigrant groups that make up their audiences – whether they are Colombian, Ecuadoran, or Panamanian.

Actualidad 1020 is the Miami outlet of one of Venezuela’s largest national radio chains. The station launched in 2008 and has grown rapidly ever since. Three of the journalists that work there were interviewed during this research: Eli Bravo, Julio Cesar Camacho, and Lourdes Ubieta, each of them respected by other Venezuelan journalists as well as familiar to Venezuelan immigrant audiences. This background helped them establish solid, successful careers in the United States, securing a space among immigrant audiences that was both influential and economically sustainable. The insights they offered about working as an immigrant journalist, all of which were connected through the theme of finding a balance, ³ were emblematic of the kind of immigrant journalism that the market driven/hybrid model represents. There was a general reflection of the realities of working in a multicultural market with its own particular form of political economy. In this context, given the influence of the Cuban community and the global nature of commerce in Miami and the transnational business connections that exist, political considerations must constantly be weighed against the multinational, multicultural nature of the audiences that exist for Spanish-language media.

This group recognized that Chávez and events in Venezuela are newsworthy, and therefore an unavoidable topic for Latin American journalists working in Miami. However, an even treatment of this topic remained important for this group, as Eli Bravo pointed out:

…when I have something that I really want to share, I’ll write about Chávez. But I don’t feel that I have to slam Chávez in the face because that’s the way I think we should do it. … There are spaces, media, and outlets for that, but I don’t think that’s our work.

Although he did not mention them directly, Bravo was acknowledging the existence of the oppositional journalists outlined in the previous section, and appeared to be trying to put some distance between their form of strident journalism and the role that he envisions for his work within the community. Camacho, the station’s news director and former manager, reached a similar conclusion, acknowledging the influence of the Venezuelan community in the station’s programming, but pointing to his colleagues’ and his own efforts to move beyond this group:

… (Actualidad 1020) even though it was founded by Venezuelan businessmen, concerns itself with all of the communities. The Venezuelans are one of the communities that we serve. Because we want to serve all of the communities represented here, in Miami, in South Florida, that are Latin American. From the Caribbean, from Central America.

Despite the rhetoric of providing an important service, there are clearly economic implications behind the decision to focus the station beyond the Venezuelan community, in trying to break out of the mold of being seen as a “Venezuelan station.” Bravo and Camacho, as well as other journalists whose work fell within the definition of this model, emphasized their efforts at reaching wider audiences; this is a calculated decision that is an outcome of the financial pressures placed on all media outlets as they seek out economic models that lead to long-term sustainability.

For Lourdes Ubieta, the decision to focus on local information was an obvious one:

I’m focusing my show in the news…So this means finances, jobs, local laws, local things. That’s because even though you are from Puerto Rico, or Colombia, you live here, you will have to pay taxes, and we will have to take care of our families, etcetera. So I’m focused on what is important for us as residents, as people who live here, as immigrants.

However, at the same time, Ubieta was clearly conscious of her connections to the Venezuelan community and the importance of their support: “…people know that I’m not on the side of President Chávez, not because of President Chávez but because of the way he’s behaving and the things that he is doing.”

Ubieta said she avoided joining up with the multiple exile Venezuelan groups that have been formed in South Florida in recent years, which she saw as problematic from a professional perspective. At the same time, “…when they phone me and say, We’re gonna have this meeting, I air it. And when they say we’re going to do this collection of money, for whatever, I go (on air) and say it.” Again, inherent in the experiences of working as an immigrant journalist shared by Ubieta, and key to the conceptualization of the hybrid model, is the idea that a balance must be found between maintaining a cultural connection with the Venezuelan community while at the same time reaching out to larger immigrant audiences that share similar information needs. Connecting too closely with the more politically oriented opposition-exile groups might not only alienate Ubieta’s non-Venezuelan listeners, but her station’s continued business connections to Venezuela would also temper the ideologies that might emerge in her work.

A transnational existence is a foundational element in the work of these immigrant journalist, but the fact that these media models modulate between a focus entirely on Venezuela to, as will be seen in the community model, an alignment with local realities and information needs, confirms what Alba and Nee (1997: 827) have written about the continued relevance of theories of assimilation for understanding the lives of immigrants:

…we hold that this social science concept offers the best way to understand and describe the integration into the mainstream experienced across generations by many individuals and ethnic groups, even if it cannot be regarded as a universal outcome of American life.

The role of mediated communication as an important element in the creation of these interactions has been theorized as following a similar course. In their research on ethnic media production and consumption among Turkish immigrants in Germany, Arnold and Schneider (2007: 133), have reached very similar conclusions, noting that:

Ethnic media do not communicate separation nor is this the intention of ethnic journalists. We did, however, find specific functions of ethnic media that point to a specific role for integration and matters of cultural identity…On one hand, the audience is looking for orientation in everyday life; on the other, emotional aspects play a crucial role.

This is a key insight, as emotional motivations and the underlying connections and conflicting tension with ideologies of journalistic professionalism remained a defining issue throughout the interviews conducted during this research.

However, also relevant to the conceptualization of these models of immigrant media are those scholars on the other side of the assimilation versus pluralism debate surrounding immigration. Their theories question the linearity of historical conceptualizations of assimilation, many of which date back to the first waves of immigrants to the United States at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th. Immigration scholar Rumbaut (1997: 924) has criticized these views as assigning assimilation with a “certain passivity and one-wayness.” Scholars on this side of the immigration debate between assimilation and pluralism question overly broad definitions of the “mainstream culture” that immigrants are supposed to assimilate into, and see the process of adjusting and adapting to life in a new country as happening much more in fits and starts, particularly in a global city like Miami. Studies of transnationalism are an attempt to bridge this divide, recognizing that while not linear, the process of adaptation to a new culture by immigrants is multi-faceted, shaped by “historical contexts” (Rumbaut, 1997: 943), and often pulled in more than one direction.

Along with the material drawn from the interviewees at Actualidad 1020, it is also helpful here to look at the interviews with Manuel Corao, publisher and editor of Venezuela al Día, and Oswaldo Muñoz, publisher and CEO of El Venezolano, as a way to further define the hybrid model. Together, these two newspapers represent the oldest Venezuelan media outlets in the study. Both are emblematic of this second model, with a clear focus on Venezuela, particularly from a political, analytical standpoint. At the same time, both newspapers, according to their publishers, have become key information sources not only for the Venezuelan community in South Florida, but for other Latin American immigrant groups as well. As Muñoz saw it, his newspaper has “a wider vision of what we consider to be important for Venezuelans that live here,” but at the same time, despite efforts to focus on the local, the goals of El Venezolano remain distinctly transnational in nature. “We are interested in what happens here and what happens there,” said Muñoz.

Corao pursues a similar model with his newspaper. During an interview in his office, as a demonstration, Corao pulled an archived edition of Venezuela al Día from the shelf, and encouraged the interviewer to do the same. Both issues were opened to the same page. In one edition, there was a story about efforts by the government to expropriate businesses in Venezuela in the name of the Bolivarian Revolution; in the other, there was a story about a health clinic opening in Miami aimed at serving the Venezuelan community. For Corao, this was a clear example of the balancing act that he performs with his publication: “…so this means that for this edition, there was more weight given to community news than national news. And in this edition, the events of the country (Venezuela) meant that there was more news nationally than from the community.”

There should be no question about the editorial line that El Venezolano and Venezuela al Día took when it came to the situation in Venezuela. As Biaggio Correale, a Venezuelan photographer who has worked for Muñoz at El Venezolano, pointed out:

Yes, perhaps there is a partiality that is political, but that’s how it is…Let’s analyze the context: What is the name of the newspaper? “El Venezolano.” And where is it? In the United States…So this immediately gives you the idea that it’s not going to speak well of Chávez.

This statement recognized the political leanings of the Venezuelan immigrant community that has exploded in size in the United States in the past decade; while there may be various levels of opposition and attachment to Venezuela, this was a community that remained nearly 100% opposed to the government currently in power.

Similar to the oppositional model, the journalists within the hybrid model also performed a balancing act when it came to the fundamentally political nature of their editorial line and the need to keep attracting sponsors who may have still had business interests in Venezuela. This often meant putting distance between themselves and the more vocal exile community. As Muñoz pointed out, the United States:

…maintains commercial and diplomatic relations with Venezuela; and very good commercial relations, because it is the largest buyer, and the truth is that we can’t talk about exile. Ninety to 95% [of Venezuelans in Miami] are against the Chávez regime, but in no way can we say that we are exiled.

However, despite claims to the contrary, even Muñoz was not immune to the influence that the Venezuelan government is still able to exert on his operations. Yolanda Medina, a journalist who worked at El Venezolano and was interviewed several months after Muñoz, revealed that Muñoz had recently run into trouble with the government there for material published in his newspaper and had to curtail his visits: “No, recently he hasn’t gone…Because right now Oswaldo is being persecuted there and his friends have advised him not to go because he could be detained for no reason.” Muñoz’s experience illustrated the fluidity inherent in the political balancing act of these journalists as they maintained a defiant stance toward the Venezuelan government and at the same time drew on the economic connections and support of the Venezuelan community to keep their operations afloat.

“Turn off the switch”: Immigrant/community model

Finally, at the other end of the spectrum from the oppositional model, there is the immigrant/community model. The elements that define this model are a strong emphasis on connections with local audiences, particularly the Spanish-speaking, Latino community, and the issues that are important to them both as an ethnic group and as immigrants. There was a stated effort by these journalists to disconnect from Venezuela. This often meant complete avoidance of Venezuelan politics and even the mention of Chávez; however, as indicated in the definition provided above, this did not mean that the Venezuelan identity of these media professionals did not have an impact on the final product. As Biaggio Correale, who along with his wife, Militza Rodríguez, launched a monthly magazine aimed at Hispanic audiences called Veintiseven, put it: “Those of us that come to this country know how to ‘turn off the switch,’ as we say. We understand the situation and that the reality… is different. And that we have to, you know, move forward.”

The case of Ciudad Doral Newspaper, published by Luis Alcala, and Doral News, published by Carlos Herrádez, were both illustrative of the immigrant/community model. For Herrádez, there was an interesting connection between the founding of Ciudad Doral Newspaper and the political campaign to incorporate Doral as a city with the county of Miami-Dade, ⁴ both of which occurred in 2002. Ciudad Doral Newspaper championed the cause of the incorporation campaign, which was called “One Doral.” “We used the name of the newspaper as the name of the city,” Herrádez said, “and we started covering events and we wrote about the community on topics that had to do with family, religion, culture, society, businesses, commerce, students.” Herrádez saw this relationship with his fellow “Doralinos” as being at the heart of his work as a journalist, calling himself a cronista de la comunidad (chronicler of the community). He said it is this relationship to the community that makes this model work: “So, people began to care about the newspaper, because they had a newspaper that reflected in its pages the events of the city. And beyond that, it was in Spanish.”

Alcala saw a similar formula for the success of these community media outlets, connecting their growth with larger societal changes. “The importance of community media has been a growth based practically in the necessity for local information,” he said. Alcala also recognized the political challenges inherent in a Spanish-language newspaper that wants to be useful to a community where not everyone speaks the language: “The first six editions (of Ciudad Doral Newspaper) were totally in Spanish. And we got an avalanche of emails, because there is an important population of Anglos here, that don’t speak Spanish.” Given the historic tensions that have existed between Anglos and Hispanics in Miami (Grenier and Portes, 1992; Portes and Rumbaut, 2006; Portes and Stepick, 1994), the decision to include English on the part of Alcala, and later by Herrádez, was astute, both politically and economically. They saw the potential to expand the size of their audience by including two languages, while at the same time avoiding ethnic and racial divisions that could in the end actually harm their distribution and standing within the community.

This emphasis on trying not to alienate certain segments of the audience ties in with a final component of the production decisions made on the part of the journalists in the immigrant/community model, which was a complete avoidance of anything having to do with Chávez or the political situation in Venezuela. This did not necessarily affect their readership among Venezuelans, as Herrádez pointed out: “I would say that all of the Venezuelans that come to Doral see this newspaper, all of them, even though here there is no news from Venezuela…Absolutely none. Here the news is about Doral.” There was the perception among these producers that, especially among Latin American immigrant groups in South Florida, many of whom arrive from situations of political instability, there was a fatigue that had set in when it comes to political discussions. According to Militza Rodríguez, of Veintiseven, this recognition was a key component in their editorial discussions prior to launching the magazine:

First of all, we all agreed that we wouldn’t have any political content in the magazine and the main reason for that is that we have so many nationalities here, and our countries are so in conflict because of politics, that we said, “Ok, people are sick of politics. Let’s try to do something different.”

The decision to stay away from politics also translated into an avoidance of being overly focused on the Venezuelan immigrant community as well. Nataly Salaz, a television reporter in Venezuela who now works with Luis Alcala at Ciudad Doral Newspaper, saw the emphasis on the community as the most important function of the newspaper:

We never touch on it, at least in Ciudad Doral Newspaper, focusing directly on the Venezuelan community, because even if they are a majority in Doral, ⁵ they are not the only population. And that’s something that I agree with. I feel that a community newspaper has to be aimed at the community, not at just one segment…We’re going to see what affects the community, it doesn’t matter if it’s Cuban, Venezuelan, Panamanian, or Brazilian.

It should be noted here that although Salaz was talking about “community,” she was still focused on Latin American immigrants. This is an important clue to the mental model that drives the work of the producers operating within this model, as well as a fascinating insight into the global nature of Miami-Dade County. For Salaz, the wider community did not signify English-speaking Anglos but rather her fellow Latin American immigrants. Salaz also emphasized the fact that what separates these outlets from those serving only the Venezuelan community is their focus on the information needs of immigrants:

You look at a Venezuelan newspaper focusing on the Venezuelan community and they’re constantly coming back to repeat the things that Chávez did, or what he said, what the ministers said, what is happening there…but no. For this, I have the Internet, if I want to know what is happening in Venezuela.

Ultimately, according to the interviews with these journalists, these key decisions about content and the emphasis on a wider immigrant audience served to ingratiate and connect them with the wider Hispanic community.

Conclusion and future directions

The three models of immigrant journalism that have been presented here are an attempt to not only explain the motivations and professional ideologies of these journalists and where they fit within a larger, theoretical framework, but to offer conceptualizations of concrete outcomes that recognize the complexities inherent in this form of mediated communication and that the multiplicity of influences and processes shaping the work of these journalists result in distinct forms of journalistic production. Within a larger contextual framework, there are also implications from this type of media production for understanding processes of immigrant assimilation and acculturation and how these more traditional theories contrast and interact with newer conceptualizations of transnational migration. This is especially true when considering a geographic context such as the once presented by the heavily globalized city of Miami. Since this research was conducted, there has also been a significant development in the political situation in Venezuela: the death of President Hugo Chávez. There are, of course, larger implications for the future of the country contained within this event; however, for the community of Venezuelans living in South Florida, given that Chávez’s handpicked successor Nicolas Maduro was recently elected and promises to continue the “Bolivarian Revolution” (Neuman, 2013), it is difficult to imagine that it will have a significant impact on the oppositional nature of the diaspora, who will continue to rally not against Chávez, but the larger framework of chavismo and all that it entails. ⁶

In the course of their work, the journalists in this study go about the process of narrating the experience of migration within their community. They maintain a focus that is bi-national in scope and that varies in degree and intensity on either the home or host country. Because of this particular journalistic formulation, their work must be viewed as playing a role in the process of adaptation and assimilation for their audience. Nearly all of the interviewees saw at least part of their job as helping to make the process of adjusting to life in a new country smoother and less jarring for their fellow immigrants, while at the same time allowing them to remain connected to events at home. Given the growing influence, scope, and impact of new communication technologies worldwide, it is worth asking whether or not these changes are also going to impact the ways in which migration is both studied and conceptualized by researchers from multiple disciplines.

At the same time, these models build on, as well as move beyond, older theories of ethnic/minority media. This work is a continuation of research that regards these types of media outlets as providing a voice to communities that may be left out of the discourse found in mainstream, national media (Husband, 2005; Riggins, 1992) – after all, the specific focus brought to bear on Venezuela and Venezuelan immigrants, given the background of these journalists, is not coverage that would be found necessarily in The New York Times or broadcast on ABC News. At the same time, these models, taken together as a whole, can also be seen as an extension of the “dual role” for ethnic media theorized by Subervi-Vélez (1986), in which he sees opportunities in the consumption of ethnic/minority media for both cultural pluralism and steps towards assimilation and acculturation regarding political orientation. These models show that within the larger framework that has been illustrated in prior work on ethnic/minority media, the motivations, ideologies, and contextual variables that influence the producers of ethnic/minority and community media lead to very particular forms of communication.

The contribution from Subervi-Vélez underscores the wider need to recognize the multi-faceted nature of immigration and how it is a constantly evolving and changing phenomenon, dependent on factors of geography, technology, socio-economic status, contexts of departure and arrival, legal status, length of time as an émigré, etc. To confine these processes to one or two defining characteristics is an exercise in futility. As Portes (1997: 800) has written, immigration theory “in the contemporary world” has involved “describing the novelty and complexity of contemporary immigration, culling concepts and insights from the classic literature on the subject and, simultaneously, getting rid of the dead weight of irrelevant debates.” It is the contention here that this research into the production of immigrant journalism contributes new insights into immigration theory by focusing on the role of mediated communication in the processes and social phenomena that are created through the confluence of media and migration.

It is also the hope on the part of the author that these models will lead to further elaboration and testing. This effort could be approached through content analyses, which could be used to test whether the insights gained from the interviews match up with the reality of what is finally produced within these three models (some of this work has already been initiated; see Fernandes and Shumow, 2012, and Shumow and Pinto, 2013). Of even greater significance would be to test whether or not these findings can be applied to the media produced by journalists within other immigrant groups, an effort from which truly valuable insights might emerge, as they could be seen as helping to explain the wider social phenomena that emerge from the connections between migration and media.