Serving low-income immigrants was supposed to be our weakness. It proved to be the key to our sustainability.
Audience trust can fund journalism. Here’s how El Timpano built a sustainable model serving marginalized communities
In January, when a wave of poisonous wild mushrooms began hospitalizing people across Northern California, the Alameda County Public Health Department reached out to El Tímpano.
They had noticed something troubling: a disproportionate number of the people getting sick were Latino and Indigenous immigrants from Latin America — the communities El Tímpano was built to serve. Within days, we sent a text message to our Spanish-speaking subscribers and produced a video in the Mayan Mam language, spoken by thousands of Oakland residents, many of whom speak little Spanish or English.
Related Knowledge Center: Inside the newsroom
As newsrooms struggle with rickety business models and precarious finances — as well as new technologies — they are deploying an array of editorial responses.
The Times and its critics | Washington Post mortem