It seems to have passed under the radar, but it's worth noting that the primary news source for Southern California published last week a Column One by Metro reporter Anna Gorman simultaneously in English and Spanish. The story, "Criando una familia con la basura de Pasadena," is about an undocumented Mexican woman named Juana Rivas who makes her living scavenging for recyclables. (Here's an audio Flash feature.) I don't know how it was presented in print but online the Spanish version of the story goes under the header "Columna Uno" and Gorman is cited, deliciously, as a "Redactora del Times."
The translation is lucid and smart, but a translator is not given credit. Yet this is fairly remarkable step taken for a newspaper that serves a global metropolis that is home to the second largest concentration of Mexicans in the world after Mexico City and operates essentially as a bilingual town. The question is, did Spanish-dominant Angelenos actually find the piece, and will they and the Times benefit from the effort?
* L.A. Times photo above by Anne Cusack.