Read: La Estrella’s impact, the creation of a Spanish news desert
- Susan Alejandra Barnett
- May 5
- 13 min read
Updated: May 6
Susan A. Barnett
The Sonoran Desert is home to Tucson, one of the two large cities in the geographically dry and arid area. Tucson has a deep rooted Mexican history, being as it was once part of Mexico and has its beginning in Spanish outposts. Unlike other cities impacted by western expansionism, Tucson was able to maintain a strong hold of its Hispanic culture and roots.
Today, Tucson boasts a 40% Hispanic population, with nearly half of the population having Hispanic heritage.
But in this desert town another kind of desert also lives on: a Spanish language news desert.
In a town where nearly half of its residents come from a Hispanic background, there is no place for this community to get their dose of local and reliable news in Spanish.
While there are other Spanish publications with news and information, none measure up to the last journalism-forward Spanish publication: La Estrella de Tucson, the Arizona Daily Star’s Spanish-sister newspaper, which shuttered its website and weekly print publication in April of 2023.
“With the closure of La Estrella, I dare say that an information desert was created in Tucson for the Spanish-language community,” said Liliana Lopez Ruelas, La Estrella’s editor at the time. “At that time, there was no other media outlet that was offering sufficient, high-quality local information and reporting with the journalistic rigor that La Estrella de Tucson did.”
At the time of its closing La Estrella ran on a skeleton staff and counted on one full time editor and two part time reporters (I was one of them).
But in its heyday, La Estrella was a full team complete with an editor, various reporters, a copy editor, graphic designer and contributors like an opinion writer, entertainment reporter, a sports columnist and even a movie reviewer. It produced its own original content as well as translating articles for the Star.
“La Estrella had all the sections you’d typically find in a local, national, and international newspaper. We had a little bit of everything for everyone,” Lopez Ruelas said. “We focused a lot on portraying the community, not only in our articles, but also in social events and other things.”
But to understand the significance of the Spanish newspaper we have to take it back to the paper’s beginning.
La Estrella’s Inception
La Estrella de Tucson began in 2004 with Jose Merino. Before that, Merino had been at the Arizona Daily Star as the art director since 2000.
“When I first arrived in Tucson as an immigrant from Sonora, I didn't find a medium that could provide me with the necessary information to help me assimilate to the civic, social, fiscal, and other customs,” Merino said. “That was the main impetus for the project.”
He felt that the Spanish news media landscape was lacking and knew he could do something about it, so he conducted a study to see how the Hispanic community in Tucson got their news.
He went out to speak with people at grocery stores, working class people in the streets and his family, hoping to incorporate what he learned from them into his new project. Once his study was complete he presented it to the publishing editor at the time, Jane Amari, who Merino says was a fundamental pillar in getting La Estrella started.
Once the case had been made and approved came the most important part: what would the publication be called?
Initially, Merino wanted to name it El Tucsonense, unaware of the significance of the historical newspaper to the Hispanic community of decades before, but he came to La Estrella de Tucson. The literal translation to English is The Star of Tucson, but it blended seamlessly with the Arizona Daily Star as a similar translation.
La Estrella started off as an immigrant press, a “foreign-language newspaper that in the long run promotes assimilation of immigrants,” according to American sociologist Robert E. Park.
While assimilation often has a negative connotation, it also allows newly arrived immigrants to become accustomed to the customs, behaviors and the system of the country they’ve immigrated to.
When immigrants arrive in the United States, they may find it hard to adjust and navigate systems they’ve never had to. Things like the school system, taxes, local politics and so many more aspects of everyday life can differ dramatically from their place of origin.
La Estrella served as a tool for immigrants to become familiar with how the United States works.
“The important thing for us was always trying to provide them with the tools they needed to quickly assimilate into Tucson society,” Merino said. “We tried to maintain the focus on improving the lives and position of the Spanish-speaking community in Tucson. People who had been in the country for ten years, people who had been in the country for five years, or people who had just arrived.”
In its initial stages it counted with one main Hispanic reporter from The Star, Carmen Duarte, some interns, a graphic designer and a photographer, alongside Merino as the editor – the entire inaugural team were immigrants or Hispanic.
“The culture (of the newsroom) was very beautiful,” said Lopez Ruelas. “We were a close-knit team, it was a very migrant culture, it was like a little Mexico inside the newsroom.”
The stories published in La Estrella were produced in Spanish from inception to publication. The ideas came from journalists in tune with their community and with a staff that also came from the community they were reporting on, and the reception was overwhelmingly positive, according to Merino.
“Carmen is an institution in local journalism,” Merino boasted. “(She) was key to this because she was a writer for The Star and offered credibility. She knew the community, she was part of the community, we were all a part of the community we were trying to cover, which is a really powerful thing.”
La Estrella’s team took an “in the streets” approach; they attended cultural and political events and founded some of today’s continuing events like the Tamal Festival. They also maintained relationships with organizations like the Mexican Consulate, even starting a small book fair at the Consulate where they gifted families books.
Being out in the community and creating events were essential for building a relationship with the Hispanic community.
“I think the business plan was the most solid part of the project. I think it capitalized very well on the business opportunities that existed at the time and I can proudly tell you that it didn't take months or years for the project to be economically viable,” Merino said. La Estrella was seeing “black numbers”, or profits, after only five weeks. “We were making money which opened up many opportunities for us within the Daily Star.”
The stories were so good, they began translating them into English as well to publish in The Star, adding to the Spanish newspaper’s credibility and establishing it as a credible and useful source for the community.
What set La Estrella apart from other Spanish publications circulating was that the paper’s main focus was to deliver news and information to the community, through formally trained journalists.
That’s what attracted Lopez Ruelas to La Estrella when she first got to Tucson in 2009.
“I remember doing a scan of the media landscape at the time and realizing that La Estrella was really doing journalism, really covering the Hispanic community, especially the Mexican community,” Lopez Ruelas said. “At that time, La Estrella, as far as I could see, was the only one doing community journalism.”
While English-language publications declined by 11% in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, Spanish-language publications tripled to a total of 1.7 million, reflecting the United States’ growing Latino population.
La Estrella was also a good source of advertising.
“At that time, many large companies had budgets dedicated to Hispanic media. However, there weren't the vehicles, the necessary means to put that money to work,” Merino said. “The publications that existed back then weren't large enough to attract major advertisers.”
La Estrella became that vehicle. They sold advertising to big retailers like JCPenney, Macy’s and Food City.
Merino left La Estrella in 2009 to join Sunnyside District as a community development liaison and Neto Portillo Jr. took his place as editor. Merino had already started seeing the decline of the journalism industry after the 2008 financial crisis.
Hispanic newspapers began to see this decline later than English ones, with an over 10% decline since 2019, which was worsened by the COVID pandemic.
Portillo Jr. worked at The Star initially writing three columns per week but it eventually shrunk to only one column per week with several other duties assigned to him. At first, he didn’t want to be the editor of La Estrella but soon realized the importance of delivering news to the Hispanic community.
“We were delivering news that people otherwise would not get,” Portillo said. “Television I wasn’t confident was covering the community, certainly radio wasn’t covering the community.”
Unlike both Merino and Lopez Ruelas, the two other editors of La Estrella, Portillo Jr. was a second generation Mexican-American who was born and raised in Tucson.
Soon after joining the Spanish team, cuts became part of everyday life. Advertising slowed down and newspapers began to see where they could save.
Lopez Ruelas was a copy editor on a shrinking team under Portillo Jr. when she witnessed her first big round of layoffs in the newsroom after only a couple of months of working at La Estrella.
She noticed that while people were laid off or left for other jobs, positions were no longer being filled and team members began taking on more responsibilities. When she was promoted to full time, not only was she a copy editor but a reporter and a translator.
More and more, stories published in La Estrella were translated from stories originally written in English. Less and less were they originally reported in Spanish.
In 2019, Portillo took a buyout and left. The newspaper was a “shadow of itself,” according to Portillo.
Liliana was left as the only full time employee at La Estrella from 2018 to 2021, until they hired a reporter who left to go back to her home country of Colombia,
“We were a little bit forgotten,” she said. “There was a lack of vision and sensitivity, and it was a constant struggle.”
Then, like the relief a monsoon rain brings, she was given a symbolic palo verde branch: a full time position for someone to help her at La Estrella. Lopez Ruelas decided to split the position into two part time positions and hired Sofia Moraga and myself, Susan Barnett.
Moraga and I both produced original content for La Estrella, but we spent a lot of time translating articles. Moraga worked closely with Lopez Ruelas on a Whatsapp newsletter initiative that sent out five pieces of news and five events weekly, as well as provided an audio version.
I worked only ten hours a week, mainly translating articles and oftentimes working off the clock to complete original content.
“(La Estrella) had an impact on the community, it was connected to the community, but I do think we were losing that connection in part as a result or consequence of all the changes,” Lopez Ruelas said. “It's a consequence of the financial adjustments, but I'd also like to be self-critical and say that perhaps we needed to give up other things and get out on the streets more.”
La Estrella’s Decline
April 25, 2023 marked the last day of La Estrella de Tucson.
Early that morning Lopez Ruelas received a call from an out-of-state phone number.
“They told me, ‘Turn off your computer right now, and whatever you’re doing, leave it as it was.’ And when I asked what would happen to La Estrella, they told me they couldn’t give me any information,” she said.
She immediately called the rest of the team; she knew if she was being laid off as the editor of La Estrella, that the entire team would also be laid off, and she was right.
Shortly after, Sofia and I also got a call, marking the end of La Estrella de Tucson, the only Spanish language newspaper in the city.
During its closure, the newspaper had taken on new initiatives like the Whatsapp chat which was something new in the industry during that time and had great success. The team had also conducted a distribution study to see where the most strategic places would be to put stands of the newspaper. The team was also about to launch “Tucsóneando,” a new series that highlighted places in Tucson to expand the Latino community’s knowledge of the city.
La Estrella was working towards revamping the distribution and the way news was being delivered. Lopez Ruelas had been meeting with the community and adapting to technological changes.
Before Lopez Ruelas logged out of her computer for the last time, she published one last post saying goodbye to La Estrella’s readers. To this day, La Estrella’s home page stands with that note as the last one ever published to the site.
“Frankly, it was very sad. It was very disappointing,” Lopez Ruelas said. “I didn't expect it to be that way. It's a very strange thing, because I didn't expect it, but at the same time, it was on all of our minds. We were talking about it among my colleagues, and I wanted to believe that the closing of La Estrella wouldn't be like this, but it was. It was very sad.”
Lopez Ruelas admits that she knew there was support for La Estrella locally. She felt it from her coworkers who helped her launch the Whatsapp project, and who continuously supported her, even when she was the only person at La Estrella. She felt it when she went into the community to talk about their needs. She felt it when she pitched solutions to the distribution study she’d conducted to her higher ups.
“I think there was a lack of vision and sensitivity at higher levels because, to this day, I cannot understand that in Tucson, which is also one of the few newspapers in the Lee and Gannett chains that continues to generate profits, I can't believe they've dismantled the only Spanish-language publication in a city like Tucson, with more than 40% of the Latino population,” she said.
While the journalism industry had been slowly declining for over a decade, the impact of the newsroom on local communities had not been.
But big corporations don’t get to see beyond the numbers, and despite the Star’s continuous revenue growth, shutting down La Estrella was another way to cut costs.
“We’re just a victim of the circumstances,” Merino said. “Unfortunately, publications like La Estrella are just like another special section, it's not their bread and butter. There is room for more publications like La Estrella, however I don’t think big corporations are willing to go that route. It's a way to save money and not have to worry about a publication that you don't even understand, an audience that you don't even understand as a mega company.”
As opposed to the Star that relied on paid subscribers, La Estrella was free until its last day in its newspaper form as well as online. If the Star wrote a ‘subscriber only’ story readers could hop onto La Estrella’s website and read the story for free.
While Lopez Ruelas mentions that reaching the Latino community got harder everyday, with the rise in social media as a source of news, she says that there was still a community that was reading La Estrella and interacting with the publication.
“There were years when La Estrella enjoyed so much independence and autonomy because no one cared enough at the highest levels,” Lopez Ruelas said. “And they started to care when they started seeing losses, but there wasn't enough willingness to solve the biggest problems, which for me were circulation, audience, and advertising sales.”
What happened at La Estrella is part of a larger phenomenon of Spanish language and ethnically diverse papers being gutted as the owners of large corporations looked to cut costs where they saw fit.
“La Estrella was created, like other Spanish language supplements across the country, to carry advertising,” Portillo said. “There's a large community out there with spending power and advertisers wanted to reach them.”
The newspaper industry took a hard hit when advertisers moved online, contributing to the slashes.
Ownership’s contribution to La Estrella’s decline
Another factor is the ownership of newspapers. mz is owned by Lee and Gannet; while Lee is in charge of news, sales and marketing departments, Gannet manages circulation, manufacturing and distribution departments.
“Corporate buyouts have been a negative for journalism in general. Outside entities buy a locally owned newspaper that has strong local connections (and) corporate interests no longer have that local interest,” Portillo said. “Today newspapers are being bought out largely by hedge funds and they are in the business of making money, cutting off what they believe is not profitable and then maybe selling off the only profitable side of the business.”
A 2023 Axios report shows that Gannet has laid off nearly half of its employees since its 2019 merger with GateHouse. Due to a debt accrued by the merger, Gannett has had to cut costs wherever they can to “appease stockholders and remain independent.”
As corporations continue to try and cut costs year after year, Spanish language versions continue to be the first ones to feel the effects.
Between 2022 and 2023, the year La Estrella closed, more than 7,000 jobs vanished. The layoff that La Estrella’s team experienced happened alongside 6 other employees from the English side.
“It was a sad day for the history of Spanish-language journalism in Tucson and Southern Arizona,” Merino said. “The closing of La Estrella was a great loss for the community. I think it had a lot of life, many more miles, many years of life as a print publication.”
The closure of La Estrella left an entire community with no reliable news source, leaving them to rely on the internet that is abound with misinformation, or to rely on chisme, or gossip.
“(They’ll find) information that is completely lacking and inaccurate,” Poritllo said. “That's ultimately the greatest threat to our country and our society.”
A New Hope
While another Spanish print publication may never be a reality in Tucson again, there is still hope for local Spanish media.
Independent news startups like El Foco de Tucson, Conecta Arizona and Arizona Luminaria have tried to fill the gap of reporting in Spanish. Conecta has their website completely in Spanish while Spotlight and the Luminaria offer articles in English and Spanish. Tucson Sentinel also offers a limited number of stories in Spanish.
Independent digital news sites have gained popularity in recent years, with a Medill annual study revealing that there has been an increase of 80 news startups from 2022-2023 despite a continual decline in the traditional journalism industry.
There has also been a surge in philanthropy in local news, allowing the independent journalism landscape to thrive.
“In the wake of all the changes that have taken place in the industry, not everything has been bad,” Lopez Ruelas said. “There's a boom right now in local independent media outlets, most of which still focus their resources primarily on English-language journalism, but they're making a huge effort in community journalism in Spanish. It's a very positive change that's taking place over the years, over time, and in the wake of a crisis.”
While La Estrella’s closure left a hole in the access to information in the Hispanic community, it serves as an example for what media outlets should strive for to serve the Spanish speaking community.
“We're no longer in a time when we should aspire to a great newspaper, a great name, a great media outlet. I think we're in a time when we should aspire to collaborate,” Lopez Ruelas said. “I think the efforts that have emerged recently will grow, and I think the answer will be unity… I think good times are coming for local journalism in Spanish.”
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