Local news isn’t only about providing the community with stories about what is happening. It’s also about making sure that information is accessible. Language is often an overlooked barrier in that goal.
As NEWSWELL works to reimagine the Santa Barbara News-Press and the future of local news in Santa Barbara County, a series of listening sessions was conducted across the county in the spring. One key finding from those original meetings was a general lack of coverage from northern Santa Barbara County cities, such as Buellton, Guadalupe and Santa Maria.
Many North County residents, however, don’t consume their news in English.
About two-fifths of Santa Barbara County residents speak a language other than English at home, according to the 2023 American Community Survey. Of those multilingual residents, over four-fifths are Spanish speakers.
At a listening session in early May, Santa Maria native and associate director of the Fund for Santa Barbara Patricia Solorio voiced concern about the dwindling access to reliable Spanish-language news.
“We really need to have both information coming from the Spanish-speaking community and (going) to the Spanish-speaking community that is accurate and factual,” Solorio said at the time. She also suggested that NEWSWELL look into specific gaps in coverage that exist for the Spanish-speaking community in the area.
Spanish-language media has noticeably narrowed in recent years. In December 2011, the local Univision TV news broadcast Noticias Costa Central went off the air after eight years. And even though those with access to Channel 38 can still watch a program with the same name, the current broadcast focuses on the Monterey Bay region rather than San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties.
The shift has meant less access to local Spanish-language news for the program’s viewership — 230,000 across both counties at the time of cancellation — and an overall decrease in in-depth coverage across all regions of Santa Barbara County.
North County residents have a strong desire for more local investigative and enterprise journalism. They lament that existing news coverage is surface-level and often doesn’t include investigations that relate back to their community.
In Lompoc, for example, Vandenberg Space Force Base often launches SpaceX satellites and rockets, including eight launches in September; already in October, there have been three Falcon 9 rocket launches, with several more scheduled. In addition to announcements that the launches are happening, local volunteer and activist Consuelo Lopez thinks the media should report on consequences from the liftoffs, including house damage like broken windows.
“There is a discussion about when (rockets) will be launched and how high up in the air they will go, but there’s no follow-up,” Lopez said. “The community isn’t informed, and (the Space Force base) doesn’t even know how it affects us.”
Santa Maria journalist Claudia Caceres expressed similar concerns. As the founder and CEO of her own news outlet, Tu Tiempo Digital Contigo, a Spanish-language website covering Santa Maria and other parts of the Central Coast, Caceres says it is not only a local news organization’s responsibility to inform the public of problems, but to investigate them in order to be part of the solution.
“There are issues that are interrelated, like drugs and gangs. Minimal (drug) consumption can turn into a gang, which will later have guns,” Caceres said. “It’s a problem that if you, as an outlet, a community or a government don’t help solve, it becomes a very big problem — which is what we’re living (with) right now.”
Many of the Spanish-language readers that NEWSWELL heard from were community organizers and nonprofit workers who emphasized the need for more specific information like demographic details and policy breakdowns. Fernando Martinez, the organizing manager of the Mixteco Indigena Community Organizing Project, wants explanations of sophisticated city- and county-level decisions affecting everyday people, such as new housing projects.
Beolge Molina, who conducts mental health programming in Lompoc for the nonprofit organization Corazon Latino, said local journalism should provide stronger research and credible statistics about the Spanish-language community. By using that information, Corazon Latino and other organizations could then be more precise in how they serve Santa Barbara County’s constituents, she said.
“If we don’t have statistics, we don’t have real data about who we are going to address. There are organizations that require that information, that data, for us to be able to develop new programs,” Molina said.
Credible news coverage was also a concern among North County’s listening session participants. The community is tight-knit, and with limited Spanish-language journalism in the area, many said they get their information and news from Facebook or WhatsApp group chats — even though they know the news there can be unreliable.
Emphasizing the importance of that tight-knit community, Lopez said she was excited about one of NEWSWELL’s goals for the new Santa Barbara News-Press: community involvement.
“I want (the News-Press) to express interest for people like us, with the needs we face here,” she said. “We all have to unite the community.”
Jackie Jauregui is a freelance journalist and translator based in Santa Barbara County. She has experience with foreign reporting in Berlin and is interested in combining her foreign language skills with honest, complex reporting.