La Estrella de Tucson: More than cops and robbers

Wednesday, 25 November 2009 19:36

On Nov. 17, Border Beat reporters Tierra Prewitt and Sean Hillier visited La Estrella de Tucson to get an inside look at Southern Arizona’s largest all Spanish-language newspaper.

La Estrella is published every Friday and is available for free inside the Arizona Daily Star, as well as in more than 400 stands located throughout Tucson. The locations of the stands can be found on La Estrella’s Web site in the “Puntos de distribucion” section.

Created in October 2004, La Estrella’s distribution is around 31,000 within Friday’s Daily Star, according to Tucson.com’s Hispanic Media Kit.

Ernesto Portillo Jr., editor of La Estrella, estimated total distribution in the low 40,000s.

Portillo has been with the Daily Star for nearly 10 years and became the editor of La Estrella in late July 2009.

Listen to Portillo describe  La Estrella's background and what it accomplishes for the Hispanic community in Southern Arizona:

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The paper gets its name from the Spanish translation of “The Star.” It has a small and diverse staff that works throughout the week to get the paper ready for Friday distribution.

Several different sections of the paper cover all sorts of topics. The main sections are: Gente, which covers entertainment and people; Sociales, which is a community culture section; Ciudad, which covers the city of Tucson, Ariz.; and Deportes, which covers sports.

“A lot of the stories that we run we call news that you can use,” Portillo said. “Information is very critical to the community because we see ourselves as a source of educational news, like how to do something or where to access resources.”

The paper also has an opinion section, a calendar of events and television listings in Spanish.

Members of the staff come from places as far away as Colombia, Chile, Sonora and Chihuahua, Mexico, as well as Tucson, Ariz. This diversity helps the paper to keep its stories original and new.

Due to the fact that the paper is only published once a week, the paper is slightly limited in its ability to be a real news source.

“In its five years, La Estrella has been more feature (oriented), but it is my goal to make it more hard news with some features,” Portillo said. “We publish on a weekly basis so it’s hard to get ahead of the news curve.”

But Portillo doesn’t let that keep the paper from increasing the knowledge of its readers.

In an issue in November 2009, Portillo wrote a column informing readers of the latest health care reform that had passed through the U.S. House of Representatives two weeks prior to the paper coming out.

“It’s important because I’m not sure if our readers understand completely health care reform,” Portillo said. “The goal of this paper is to educate and inform our readership on what is going on in our greater community. We don't cover cops and robbers.”

To get an idea of what the week is like for the staff, listen to Portillo explain how the paper gets done:

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Meet the staff of La Estrella de Tucson:

Editor: Ernesto Portillo Jr.

Graphic Designer: Felipe Lucero

Copy Editor and Reporter: Berenice Rosales

Reporter: Natalia Lopera

Reporter: Mariana Alvarado

Written by Sean Hillier and Tierra Prewitt You are reading La Estrella de Tucson: More than cops and robbers articles