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How the demise of The Union-Tribune’s Spanish-language edition impacts San Diego Latinos

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2 years ago

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How the demise of The Union-Tribune’s Spanish-language edition impacts San Diego Latinos


Latino journalists and news industry observers say Alden Global Capital’s quiet cancellation of The San Diego Union-Tribune’s Spanish-language weekly is a blow to the region’s second largest population at a critical time.

They argue the end of The Union-Tribune en Español comes in an era when more Spanish-language media is needed, not less, as the nation gears up for local, state and federal elections this year.

“It’s especially important during an election year for a publication to have information in both languages,” said Hiram Soto, former staffer and columnist of the U-T en Español when it was called Enlace. “(The closure) generates a gap in information that leads to less informed voters and leads to less engaged voters. It’s just really a slap in the face of the community.”

The Union-Tribune published its final edition of the U-T en Español on Dec. 30, marking the end of a nearly 25-year run in which the newspaper published a Spanish-language edition. Two reporters and an editor were let go as a result, according to sources within the organization.

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Former San Diego Union Tribune Spanish-language edition reporter and columnist Hiram Soto poses with various iterations of the weekly, which was cancelled last month.

Neither the Union-Tribune nor Alden, the private equity firm that bought the newspaper last year, issued a statement on the decision. Both ignored requests for comment from KPBS.

No numbers are available on the circulation of the U-T en Español, but it served a county where 35% of 3 million residents are Latino and 150,000 cross the border with Mexico each day. The Spanish-language edition began in 2000 and was widely read by Latinos from all walks of life, Soto said. He added that it was viewed as a public service and an attempt at inclusivity.

“Before this publication, the Union Tribune’s coverage of immigrant communities, of Latino communities, of border communities, were very centered on crime and drug trafficking,” Soto said. “When this publication opened, it broadened it to cover the arts, community leaders. It uplifted people that were doing real change in the community. It focused a lot on social issues impacting the community every day.”

News industry watchers say they are not surprised at the decision by Alden, which has a track record of making deep cuts to newspapers after purchasing them.

“They seem to have very relatively little interest in having anything more than sort of the bare minimum of a newspaper that will appeal to loyal forever readers,” said Rick Edmonds, media business analyst for the Poynter Institute.

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Tim Franklin, director of the Medill Local News Initiative at Northwestern University, says the move to end the Spanish-language weekly was likely driven by the bottom line.

“Alden is going to jettison what it views as its most costly or least profitable pieces of its operation,” Franklin said. “They have a history of doing that across the country.”

Franklin added that the U-T en Español’s demise is consistent with a nationwide trend that has only accelerated in the pandemic era. 

“In 2020, there were about 900 ethnic media outlets in the United States,” Franklin said, citing a Medill database on local news organizations that he maintains. “We’ve lost 173 of those in the last three years since the pandemic. And of the 173 that closed, 106 were Latino publications, most of those Spanish-language publications.”

He explained that many ethnic media outlets never recovered from the loss of advertising revenue during the pandemic when people stopped shopping, as well as the closures of small mom-and-pop retailers.

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The National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ) is so concerned with the Spanish-language media decline that it has formed a rapid response team on the issue. Arelis Hernandez, vice president for print with NAHJ, said the group strives to meet with news organizations to understand “the reasoning behind” the decisions to shutter the outlets.

She said the U-T en Español closure, the disbanding of the Dallas Morning Herald’s Spanish-language newspaper last year and the discontinuation of The Washington Post’s Spanish-language podcast in 2022 don’t make sense.

“Latinos have grown to more than 19% of the population (nationwide), and we’re continuing to grow,” Hernandez said. “There is a migrant population that is increasingly needing resources in their language to navigate this new world of the United States. It’s just like we’re not understanding the economics of this either, $3.4 trillion is the purchasing power of Latinos.”

Art Castañares, publisher of the Spanish-language weekly La Prensa San Diego, says what’s also not well understood is that even many bilingual people like to read their news in Spanish.

“It’s not just the language,” Castañares said. “It’s understanding the culture, the impact and being sensitive to that.”

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Soto, who is now in public relations, says it’s also about another intangible. Trust. He said the U-T’s Spanish-language newspaper painstakingly built trust with local Latinos over the years through reporters’ presence at pivotal events and how they wrote about the community.

He brings up a case in point. As wildfires ripped through eastern San Diego County in October 2003, it was Soto — assigned to cover the farm workers — who told them through smoke-filled air they had to evacuate.

“You couldn’t really breathe,” Soto said. “And they were still picking tomatoes and strawberries. They didn’t even know that there were evacuation orders.”

The publication also covered in-depth the migrants who were burned to death atop Tecate Peak during the 2007 fires.

“I remember being embedded with the rescuers,” Soto said. “We found the bodies of people who were burnt. We told the stories of people who were lost crossing the border and the stories behind it and how people in the community rallied and provided the resources for rescuers to go and find their loved ones.”

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Soto said those pieces told the region’s Latinos that the paper cared about them. He worries ending the U-T En Español means that’s no longer true.



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San Diego, CA

San Diego sues federal government over razor wire fence near U.S.-Mexico border

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6 hours ago

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January 6, 2026

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San Diego sues federal government over razor wire fence near U.S.-Mexico border


The city of San Diego has filed a lawsuit against the federal government that alleges the construction of a razor wire fence near the U.S.-Mexico border constitutes trespassing on city property and has caused environmental harm to the land.

The complaint filed Monday in San Diego federal court states that razor wire fencing being constructed by U.S. Marines in the Marron Valley area has harmed protected plant and wildlife habitats and that the presence of federal personnel there represents unpermitted trespassing.

The lawsuit, which names the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Department of Defense among its defendants, says that city officials first discovered the presence of Marines and federal employees in the area in December.

The fencing under construction has blocked city officials from accessing the property to assess and manage the land, and the construction efforts have” caused and will continue to cause property damage and adverse environmental impacts,” according to the lawsuit.

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The suit seeks an injunction ordering the defendants to cease and desist from any further trespass or construction in the area.

“The city of San Diego will not allow federal agencies to disregard the law and damage city property,” City Attorney Heather Ferbert said in a statement. “We are taking decisive action to protect sensitive habitats, uphold environmental commitments and ensure that the rights and resources of our community are respected.”



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San Diego, CA

Padres roster review: Sung-Mun song

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19 hours ago

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January 6, 2026

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Padres roster review: Sung-Mun song





Padres roster review: Sung-Mun song – San Diego Union-Tribune


















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SUNG-MUN SONG

  • Position(s): Third base, second base
  • Bats / Throws: Left / Right
  • 2026 opening day age: 29
  • Height / Weight: 6-foot / 194 pounds
  • How acquired: Signed as a free agent in December 2025
  • Contract status: A four-year, $15 million deal will see Song make $2.5 million in 2026, $3 million in 2027, $3.5 million in 2028 and $4 million in 2029 if he does not opt out of last year; Half of his $1 million signing bonus is due in January 2026 and the other half in 2027; There is a $7 million mutual option for 2030.
  • fWAR in 2025: N/A
  • Key 2025 stats (KBO): .315 AVG, .387 OBP, .530 SLG, 26 HRs, 90 RBIs, 103 runs, 68 walks, 96 strikeouts, 25 steals (144 games, 646 plate appearances)

 

STAT TO NOTE

  • .214 — Song’s isolated power in 2025, a career high as he prepared for a jump to the majors. Isolated power measures a player’s raw power (extra bases per at-bat) and Song had a .190 OPS in 2018, in his third year as a pro in Korea, before it dropped to .101 in 2019 and then a career-low .095 in 2023. Hitting 19 homers pushed Song’s isolated power to .178 in 2024 and then a career-high 26 homers push it even higher in 2025.

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San Diego, CA

Poway removes hundreds of trees to make city safer

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1 day ago

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January 5, 2026

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Poway removes hundreds of trees to make city safer


Drivers traveling through the city of Poway may have noticed a dramatic change to the landscape. Since September, more than 1,400 trees — many of them eucalyptus — have been removed as part of the city’s hazardous mitigation grant project aimed at reducing wildfire risk and improving public safety.

Poway is spending roughly $3 million on the effort, which focuses on removing trees that are dead, dying or considered dangerous. Much of the cost is being reimbursed by FEMA. Officials say the project is designed to make emergency evacuation routes safer while improving the overall health of trees along major roadways, rights-of-way and open spaces.

“I was relieved that there were some efforts being put into improving our resiliency to wildfire in our community,” said Poway Fire Chief Brian Mitchell.

Mitchell said spacing out trees can slow the spread of a wildfire and prevent roads from becoming blocked during an emergency.

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“That certainly has the potential to block our first responders from accessing somebody’s house in the middle of an emergency,” Mitchell said.

City leaders also point to storm safety as a key reason for removing hazardous trees under controlled conditions rather than risking falling limbs or entire trees during severe weather.

“I don’t want to be driving down that street and just a random limb just happened to collapse, you know, just hit me,” said Poway resident Dawn Davis.

Davis said she also worries about the threat the trees pose to nearby homes.

“I don’t want anybody’s homes here to be damaged, either by them or fire,” Davis said.

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A Poway spokeswoman said a certified arborist evaluated nearly 6,800 trees in Poway. About 2,800 invasive trees were recommended for removal.

This story was originally reported for broadcast by NBC San Diego. AI tools helped convert the story to a digital article, and an NBC San Diego journalist edited the article for publication.



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