McClatchy Co. has partnered with Hispanic news and information company ImpreMedia for a content sharing deal.
The agreement allows both companies’ newspapers and Web sites to post articles from each others’ writers. Seven of ImpreMedia’s locally focused papers are included in the deal, as are three of McClatchy’s Spanish-language publications.
“It’s all about audience — how we can maintain the audience we have today and the circulations, which translates into audience, and at the same time how do we get new readers of our publications,” said Cesar Pizarro, VP of McClatchy’s Miami Herald Media Co. and business manager of El Nuevo Herald. “We do this by providing information. The Hispanic market has been underserved in many markets, and now we’re providing an alternative.”
ImpreMedia, which has a larger Spanish-language audience base than McClatchy, gave the partnership a slightly different spin.
“We have growth in both paid circulation as well as in readership across all properties, so the goal here is not necessarily to impact paid circulation but to continue to grow our audience to expand our footprint and reach into demographic groups that we may not serve to the level we would like currently,” said Monica Lozano, SVP of ImpreMedia and publisher/CEO of La Opinion. “It also allows us to reach areas where we don’t have a product at the moment. For example, this takes us into Dallas, and it’s a smart way to get into Dallas without going through an acquisition or a start-up.”
Shared stories will most likely be drawn from the lifestyle, sports and entertainment sectors, but breaking news and special projects will also be shared.
“The newspapers have to remain very local because that’s their strength, but there’s a lot of national and international news that will be of interest to readers in different markets, so we’re trying to provide more of that information,” Pizarro explained.
Shared articles will feature by-lines citing the author’s home publication, to help spread the brand names across platforms.
Lozano said that ImpreMedia was not targeting a particular type of new reader, but was trying to spread the brand across as many channels and to as many types of readers as possible. Pizarro, too, pointed out the importance of a widespread, multimedia approach to audience-building. He also indicated that McClatchy was most interested in drawing readers who were younger and newer to the US.
ImpreMedia publishes titles in New York, the San Francisco Bay area, Los Angeles, Chicago, Orlando, FL and Houston, San Antonio and the Rio Grande Valley in TX, serving a total market of close to 30 million Hispanics. McClatchy’s participating titles hail from FL, CA’s Central Valley and Dallas and Fort Worth, TX.
