As the first Asian immigrant to become New York City's Comptroller, John Liu has an advantage over many of his senior colleagues in City government.
It is: he understands the role of the ethnic and community media organizations in the City from personal experience. So when he told reporters less than a week ago that both the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and City agencies could do a far better job in reaching their target audiences through the use of those media institutions, his observations should have resonated with decision-makers in city and state government, managers whose job is to decide where the taxpayers' money is to be sent.
Asked during a press conference about the allocation of City advertising budgets, Liu criticized the MTA, a state agency, and various local government departments that serve the five boroughs for not spending more of their advertising dollars with those media outlets that penetrate the immigrant and other ethnic communities.
Apart from the issue of fairness, Liu was looking at the bottom line, the bang for the buck, if you will.
"The question for me is why those agencies aren't getting more of their ads out to those community newspapers," he said. He then pointed an accusing and telling finger at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and City Hall, saying the "agency that I think is most guilty of this is not a City agency, it is the MTA. They fail to put notices in many of our community newspapers. I think that both the MTA and the City can do a better job of doing that because the reality is that the so-called daily papers are not read by a large percentage of people living in this City."
It is estimated that the City and the MTA spend millions of dollars annually to place public notices in newspapers but far too many of the decision-makers ignore community newspapers, which are relatively small businesses, often owned by families but which reach a large segment of the market.
Almost 200 ethnic and community newspapers and magazines are being published in New York City regularly in the City. They constitute a vibrant press. They are published in at least 30 languages, serving the Black, Dominican, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Indian, African, Caribbean, Chinese, Latino, Russian, Italian, Korean, Polish, Greek, and Irish sections of the population.
With about three million immigrants in the five boroughs, we have witnessed an explosive growth in community newspapers, so much so that New York is now the world's ethnic media capital. Today, there are more community media institutions than at any other time in the City's history.
Most of them are weekly publications, while others are dailies and a few are distributed monthly or every two months. Unlike the mainstream publications which emphasize crime and periodic ethnic festivals when covering immigrant neighborhoods community papers are driven by issues such as the interpretation of American life and they focus on the challenges confronting immigrants. Just as important, they highlight the burning social, economic and political issues back in the respective home countries or regions, hence their strong appeal. Sandy Close, executive director of New American Media, a nationwide association of over 700 ethnic media organization, observed recently that ethnic media "play a critical role in the economic utility" of the communities they serve. Without them, communities would be isolated and small business would find it almost impossible to grow their customer base.
Communities that are isolated often become paralyzed. The media organizations that serve them prevent cultural and economic paralysis by encouraging immigrants to assume a public persona and foster community participation and a sense of belonging.
These taxpayers and residents, three million of them in New York City have a right to expect that these valuable outlets of mass communications are supported by advertisements, not handouts from the public treasury. If the mainstream media benefits from local and state government so should the ethnic press. It's that simple.
As Liu pointed out, quite correctly, they cater to and reach a large segment of our City's population in a way that others don't. If we believe in market forces driving business, then it stands to reason why decisions about advertising should be based not on sentiment or traditional practice but by the hard realities of business.
Remarkably, many of the community and ethnic media institutions struggle to survive, even without significant doses of the financial lifeblood of ads from government, large corporations, academia and philanthropy. It's time to change that equation.
Kudos for Liu.
