Publisher's Note: Bmore Partners With Mundo Latino

I'm told that my generation is supposed to eschew physical recordkeeping in favor of cloud computing, choose Facebook over scrapbooks, and check Twitter instead of the morning paper for news. But I have a confession -- I like the way newspapers feel. That's true both because the tactile experience is unique, and because newsprint holds significance beyond the words inked on it.

A century ago, the port city of Baltimore was home to a vibrant and polyglot local press. In their native-language newspapers, Italians marked the failure of the 1904 fire to jump the Jones Falls, Germans found out who was on the latest steamship from Bremen to land at Locust Point, and Jews read about Yiddish vaudeville troupes coming to Lombard Street alongside news of pogroms in the Pale of Settlement. African-Americans have been served by the Baltimore Afro-American since 1892, and English-speaking generations that followed immigration have continued as Anglophone heirs to many ethnic newspaper traditions.

Now, with some 20,000 Latino residents concentrated in the city's southeast and northwest, Baltimore's Spanish-language press is taking off. Mundo Latino launched this April with 7,000 free newspapers in stores from Owings Mills to Beltsville, joining Latin Opinion and Ojo Latino in the effort to make our most recent wave of newcomers feel supported. As an online magazine, Bmore of course embraces the possibilities that digital distribution presents, and we are thrilled to know that Baltimoreans around the country and abroad are reading our weekly e-mails to stay connected to home. Nevertheless, the emergence of Spanish newspapers here reminds us of our collective past and foreshadows a joined future in a special way. By working with partners at NewsTrust Baltimore, WYPR-FM, and now Mundo Latino, we are exploring what today's media can do to represent Baltimore as what it's always been -- a constantly evolving community.


Sam Hopkins is a Baltimore-based freelance writer and the publisher of Bmore Media.


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