PR executives flocked last night to the News Corp. building in Midtown Manhattan to “Meet the Media,” or more specifically, to meet some of the journalists behind MundoFox, ABC/Univision, Impremedia’s El Diario la Prensa and Time Warner Cable’s NY1 Noticias.
The evening event, organized by the New York Chapter of the Hispanic Public Relations Association (HPRA) featured Luis Hernández, Executive News Producer at MundoFox, who stepped in for anchor Rolando Nichols, who was sent on a special assignment to Rome; Nuria Net, Deputy Editor at Univision News; Maritza Puello, Executive Editor of NY1 Noticias and Marlene Peralta, Opinion Editor at El Diario La Prensa. The panel was moderated by Daily News showbiz reporter Zaida Rivera.
Rivera kicked off the conversation highlighting the news about Univision beating NBC in the February sweeps, a discussion that naturally led to the English vs. Spanish dilemma.
While MundoFox, NY1 Noticias and El Diario target the Spanish-dominant Hispanic, Fusion – the ABC/Univision joint venture – is going after millennials, with news and entertainment in English and not necessarily only to Hispanics.
“Some of our reporters don’t even speak Spanish,” said Net about some of the journalists hired by the joint venture. Making referring to her audience, she said: “We don’t hit them in the head with Hispanic themes. We want to reach them with compelling stories.”
PR professionals attending the sold-out session also wanted to know what is the best way to approach the media, either in English or Spanish. All of them, except for Net, said they prefer Spanish.
“Make sure it’s short, to the point and don’t send me an email when I’m in the middle of a breaking news,” Puello told the audience. “I probably won’t read your email.”
Some takeaways from the conversation:
* MundoFox’s Hernández dismissed criticisms around airing series like ‘El Capo’ on his network, claiming they do reflect the reality of our countries, in this case Colombia.
* Oswald Méndez, MundoFox CMO, was in attendance and at some point yelled from the back of the room, saying he did not agree with those who say language is irrelevant. “Language does matter,” said Méndez.
* Puello said that younger generation of journalists have to make a point of reading the newspapers and watching at least one or two newscasts. “It’s frustrating to interview young people who want to be a reporter, and don’t read the paper. Read the paper!” she emphasized multiple times.
* ABC News wanted to know how the fusion with Univision was going to deal with the inform vs. educate, especially around issues like immigration: “We are pro-immigrant; we are pro-Hispanic; we are pro-human,” Univision’s Nuria Net said.