Latinos make up nearly half the population in Los Angeles. But historically, they’ve been underrepresented in mainstream outlets or lumped together as a monolith, erasing the diverse range of cultures and voices that comprise the community. Now a new section of the Los Angeles Times is looking to change that. De Los, launched this month, aims to cover stories written by and for the Latinos in LA and beyond.
The project evolved out of the paper’s Latinx Files newsletter, which launched three years ago. Fidel Martinez, editorial director of Latino initiatives at the paper and author of the newsletter, says it was “a case study” that proved the audience had a hunger to read Latino stories in English.
“My bosses kind of realized that there is no viable future for the LA Times without Latino subscribers,” he says. “So De Los is one of several efforts to try to address that issue.”
The new project, which will primarily exist on the paper’s digital and social media platforms, involves a team of a dozen Latino reporters, editors, illustrators, and creatives. Martinez says it will expand the paper’s capacity to engage with and uplift Latino voices across LA. It also aims to rebuild the Latino community’s trust with the paper, by making all of its content free to the public.
“The LA Times doesn't have the best record with the Latino community in Los Angeles,” he says. “And so because of that … all of our De Los content is going to be in front of the paywall. It didn't make sense to us to build something for a community where we need to rebuild trust with, and then try to charge them for it.”
So far, De Los has covered everything from Latinos’ complicated relationship with Catholicism to the challenges faced by local street vendors.
Martinez says moving forward, readers can expect nuanced coverage of topics like race and intersectionality, as well as stories about the joyful aspects of Latino culture, like music and art.
“Latino stories rarely get told in media, and when they do, they often tend to portray a very simplistic or one-dimensional view of the Latino community,” says Martinez. “They tend to focus on our labor, on our suffering, or on our deaths, right? And yet, often left out of these conversations are the stories about our joy and our leisure.”
The section is also seeking contributions and collaborations from artists and writers in various Latino communities across LA.