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

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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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Military bases in San Diego County increase security following Iran attacks

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Military bases in San Diego County increase security following Iran attacks


SAN DIEGO (CNS) – Military bases in San Diego County and nationwide have increased security measures due to last weekend’s U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran, prompting traffic delays near base entrances, enhanced ID checks and access restrictions.

The Naval Air Station North Island on Coronado ports three aircraft carriers, including the San Diego-based USS Abraham Lincoln, which led some of the first-wave attacks on Saturday.

Naval Base Coronado warned motorists of possible traffic delays at all base entry points due to the increased security measures.

Targets included Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps command and control facilities, Iranian air defense capabilities, missile and drone launch sites and military airfields.

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The U.S. operation, dubbed “Epic Fury,” and Israeli operation, “Raging Lion,” began striking targets at 1:15 a.m. Eastern Time Saturday.

As of Tuesday, at least six U.S. service members had been killed in action.

The strikes also killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei, who had been Iran’s supreme leader since 1989, making him the longest-serving head of state in the Middle East.

Iran’s offensive forces claimed to have struck USS Abraham Lincoln with ballistic missiles, but according to an X post from U.S central Command, “The Lincoln was not hit. The missiles launched didn’t even come close. The Lincoln continues to launch aircraft in support of CENTCOM’s relentless campaign to defend the American people by eliminating threats from the Iranian regime.”

Those with concerns regarding the heightened security can contact San Diego County’s Office of Emergency Services at 858-565-3490 or oes@sdcounty.ca.gov.

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Copyright 2026, City News Service, Inc.





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SD Unified moves forward with layoffs of classified employees

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SD Unified moves forward with layoffs of classified employees


SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — Less than 3 weeks after the San Diego Unified School District finalized a new contract with teachers, the school board voted unanimously on Tuesday to move forward with layoff notices for other district employees.

The layoffs affect classified employees — workers who are employed by the district but are not teachers and are not certified. That includes bus drivers, custodians, special education and teacher aides, and cafeteria workers.

The district says it is eliminating 221 positions — 133 that are currently filled and 88 that are vacant — to save $19 million and help address a projected $47 million deficit for the next fiscal year.

Preliminary layoff notices will go out on March 15, with final notices by May 15.

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The district estimates about 200 classified employees will receive preliminary notices, but of them, about 70 are expected to lose their jobs based on union-negotiated bumping rules.

Bumping allows employees with more seniority to move into another position in the same classification, thereby “bumping” a less senior employee out of that role.

Lupe Murray, an early childhood special education parafacilitator with the district, said the news came as a shock after the teacher strike was called off.

“When the strike was called off, I’m like, ‘Yes!’ So then when I got the email from the Superintendent, I’m like, ‘Wait, what?’ So, I think everyone was shocked,” Murray said.

The district says it sends out annual layoff notices, as all districts in the state do.

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Before Tuesday’s board meeting, classified employees rallied outside, made up of CSEA (California School Employees Association) Chapters OTBS 788, Paraeducators 759, and OSS 724. They were joined by parents, students, and the San Diego & Imperial Counties Labor Council, AFL-CIO.

Miguel Arellano, a paraeducator independence facilitator with San Diego Unified and a representative of San Diego Paraeducators Cahpter 759.

“What do we want? No layoffs! When do we want it? Now!” the crowd chanted.

Arellano said he felt compelled to act when he learned about the potential layoffs.

“The first thing that went through my mind was that I need to speak up. I need to protect these people,” Arellano said.

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Inside the meeting, the board heard emotional, at times tearful testimony from classified employees before voting unanimously to move forward with the layoff schedule.

Superintendent Fabi Bagula said the district has tried to protect classrooms from the cuts.

“We have tried our best to only, I mean, to not touch the school. Or the classroom. But now it’s at the point where it’s getting a little bit harder,” Bagula said. “What I’m still hoping, or what I’m still working toward, because we’re still in negotiations, is that we’re able to actually come to a win-win, where there’s positions and availability and maybe even promotions for folks that are impacted.”

Arellano warned the layoffs could have a direct impact on students.

“We are already spread thin, so, with more of a case load, it’s going to be impossible to be able to service all the students that we need to have,” Arellano said.

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Follow ABC 10News Anchor Max Goldwasser on InstagramFacebook, and Twitter.

This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.





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Scripps Oceanography granted $15M for deep sea, glacier science

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Scripps Oceanography granted M for deep sea, glacier science


The Fund for Science and Technology, a new private foundation, granted Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego $15 million for ocean science Tuesday.

FFST, funded by the estate of the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, was started in 2025 with a commitment to invest at least $500 million over four years to “propel transformative science and technology for people and the planet.”

“Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego is pushing boundaries for exploration and discovery across the global ocean,” Chancellor Pradeep Khosla said. “This visionary support from the Fund for Science and Technology will enable Scripps researchers to advance our understanding of our planet, which has meaningful implications for communities around the world.”

The grant, the largest of its kind since Scripps joined UCSD in 1960, will go toward research in three areas: monitoring of environmental DNA and other biomolecules in marine ecosystems, adding to the Argo network of ocean observing robots, and enhancing the study of ocean conditions beneath Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier, often referred to as the “Doomsday Glacier.”

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Scripps Institution of Oceanography has used Argo floats for more than two decades to track climate impacts in our oceans. NBC 7 meteorologist Greg Bledsoe reports.

“The Fund for Science and Technology was created to support transformational science in the search of answers to some of the planet’s most complex questions,” said Dr. Lynda Stuart, president and CEO at the fund. “Scripps has a long tradition of leadership at the frontiers of ocean and climate science, and this work builds on that legacy — strengthening the tools and insights needed to understand our environment at a truly global and unprecedented scale.”

Scripps Director Emeritus Margaret Leinen will use a portion of the grant in her analysis of eDNA — free-floating fragments of DNA shed by organisms into the environment — in understudied parts of the ocean to collect crucial baseline data on marine organisms, according to a statement from Scripps.

“In many regions, we know very little about the microbial communities that form the base of the ocean food web or that make deep sea ecosystems so unique,” Leinen said. “Without data, we can’t predict how these communities are going to respond to climate change or what the consequences might be. That’s a vulnerability — and this funding will help us begin to address it.”

Using autonomous samplers that can collect ocean water for eDNA analysis, as well as conventional sampling, scientists will use tools to “reveal the biology of the open ocean and polar regions.”

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According to Scripps, the international Argo program has more than 4,000 floats that drift with currents and periodically dive to measure temperature, salinity and pressure. Standard floats can record data up to depths of 2,000 meters (6,560 feet), while newer Deep Argo floats can dive to 6,000 meters (19,685 feet).

The grant funding announced Tuesday will allow for Scripps to deploy around 50 Deep Argo floats along with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory.

Sarah Purkey, physical oceanographer at Scripps and Argo lead, said this leap forward in deep ocean monitoring comes at a crucial time because the deep sea has warmed faster than expected over the last two decades.

Thwaites Glacier is Antarctica’s largest collapsing glacier and contains enough ice to raise global sea level by roughly two feet if it were to collapse entirely. According to Scripps, prior expeditions led by scientist Jamin Greenbaum discovered anomalously warm water beneath the glacier’s ice shelf — contributing to melting from below. Greenbaum now seeks to collect water samples and other measurements from beneath Thwaites’ ice tongue to disentangle the drivers of its rapid melting.

This season’s Antarctic fieldwork will “test hypotheses about the drivers of Thwaites’ rapid melt with implications for sea-level rise projections,” the statement from Scripps said.

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“The ocean holds answers to some of the most pressing questions about our planet’s future, but only if we can observe it,” said Meenakshi Wadhwa, director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography and vice chancellor for marine sciences at UCSD. “This historic grant will help ocean scientists bring new tools and approaches to parts of the ocean we’ve barely begun to explore.”



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