Crazy start of the week in the national Spanish-language newspaper war. Tribune is selling its Hoy property
in New York City to ImpreMedia, the same company it's been doing battle with
over Spanish-language newspaper readers in the major Latino markets: New York,
Los Angeles, and Chicago. ImpreMedia is the alliance built in 2004 to counter Tribune's Spanish-language ambitions: its biggest papers are L.A.'s
La Opinion and New York's El Diario-La Prensa. Sounds like ImpreMedia has ambitions of its own: the company told Editor & Publisher it will not fold Hoy in New York and continue to publish it. They've also been acquiring Spanish papers in other parts of the country recently. ImpreMedia CEO John Paton told his own papers in this story from El Diario-La Prensa: "I'd love to buy Hoy in Los Angeles and Chicago. But they're not for sale. We'll just have to wait." The story also quotes USC professor Felix Gutierrez and makes special note of Hoy's previous circulation inflation scandal.
At the same time, Tribune's L.A. Times CEO David Hiller announced Monday that they are finally going to give some attention to its long-neglected Hoy paper in Los Angeles. Hiller is bringing Javier Aldape into the big tent to be "Vice President of the Los Angeles Times Media Group for Audience Development." This can only be an improvement over how the Hoy enterprise has been run so far, with non-local editorial content largely produced centrally in Chicago for all the papers. That has resulted, at least in L.A.'s case, in an Hoy paper that's failed to connect with readers. Even though it's free. We'll see how Aldape manages to "develop" this audience. If the L.A. Times' and Tribune's record on reaching the various Latino communities in LA. is any indication, he has a steep hill to climb. Maybe basic quality control is a good place to start. LAObserved reports today that the local Hoy completely missed the big U.S.-Mexico futbol match last week. Que vergüenza... * Art by Lalo Alcaraz from LAWeekly.com.