California Latino News (CALN) joins the fleet of Latino News Network (LNN) affiliates nationwide in best serving the booming U.S. Hispanic, Latino community.
“California has the country’s largest Hispanic, Latino population, with over 14.4 million,” said Hugo Balta, Publisher of CA Latino News. “A quarter of all Hispanic, Latino eligible voters, some 8.5 million, live in California. LNN needed to expand coverage to that state in this presidential election year.”
CALN became the second full-fledged LNN news website, joining Washington Latino News (WALN), which launched a year ago this month. Jacqueline Cardenas oversees LNN West. “I am grateful to be part of a growing and committed team that wishes to tell the unheard stories of our community,” she said. Cardenas, who resides in Northern California, joined LNN earlier this year.
CALN works with California State University Long Beach (CSULB) to provide students with mentoring and real-world experiences, one of the four pillars of LNN’s mission. Michael Reza’s work, a rising Senior at CSULB, was featured on LNN: Food Bank for Farmworkers.
Latino News Network’s mission also includes providing greater visibility and voice to the Hispanic-Latino community, amplifying the work of others in doing the same, and applying the principles of solutions journalism in producing stories focused on the social determinants of health and democracy.
LNN was founded in 2012 by Diane Alverio, a veteran journalist and former president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ).
Responding to the gap in news coverage of the Hispanic-Latino community in her then-home state of Connecticut, Alverio launched LNN with Connecticut Latino News, CTLatinoNews.com (CTLN). It was the first English-language news and information outlet dedicated to the Hispanic-Latino community in the state. Massachusetts Latino News, MALatinoNews.com (MALN) soon followed.
In 2019, LNN was acquired by nationally recognized journalist and media advocate Hugo Balta and his wife, Adriana Balta Naranjo. Under their leadership, LNN has expanded its statewide coverage and Hispanic, Latino editorial focus to include independent news outlets in New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Illinois, Wisconsin, Washington, WALatinoNews.com (WALN) and now CA Latino News. Earlier this year, the LNN landing page, which had been a marketing tool for the seven full-fledged websites, converted into a national news outlet.
“We are excited to be in California and look forward to nurturing relationships with journalists, news outlets, schools of higher education, organizations that raise our communities, and the people who have been our country’s past, present, and future,” said Balta.
