Over the course of 2,300 words, the poster challenged the newspaper’s coverage of a community that makes up about a quarter of the city of Half Moon Bay. His research covered roughly a month of the newspaper’s news-section reporting. He looked for Hispanic surnames in the copy and photo captions, and determined that about 7 percent of news stories appeared to have Latino sources or subjects. Photos fared somewhat better — a little more than 11 percent of the 149 photos over the period pictured Latinos, and some of them (as presumably could also be said for some Anglo subjects) were caught in a less than positive light.
We would like to congratulate our critic for tackling a subject that is not only important as it relates to your local newspaper, but also to the news industry and society at large.
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It’s true that having Latino reporters at the Review would help. It’s also true that those new reporters would often be reporting on lily-white institutions. Even more important than a full integration of the newspaper into the larger demographic, is adding Latino representation to the hierarchy of local government — at City Hall, in county government, at local taxing authorities, at area schools.
Had the poster trained his eye on the Half Moon Bay City Council, the county Board of Supervisors, the Pescadero and Midcoast advisory councils, the Montara Water and Sanitary District, the Coastside County Water District, the Granada Sanitary District, the Cabrillo and La Honda-Pescadero school systems, the Coastside fire board and the county harbor district, he would have found more than 40 elected Coastside representatives, almost all of them white and none of them of obvious Latino heritage.
The Review would like to do a better job covering the Latino community, and we welcome any suggestions to that end. Read the poster’s thoughtful criticism on Talkabout at hmbreview.com
— Clay Lambert
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