On Monday, the staff members of Al Día were told they will be reassigned to different teams in the newsroom and would no longer create Spanish-language content. Al Día has been covering the Hispanic community in North Texas for nearly two decades.
Update - 2/14/23 11:00 a.m. An updated release from The Society of Professional Journalists clarifies that The Dallas Morning News isn't ending their Spanish language cover. Below is an updated prepared statements Dallas Morning News CEO Grant Moise: "The Dallas Morning News and Al Día remain committed to reaching the growing Hispanic audience in North Texas. We will continue to publish Al Día every Wednesday in print and aldiadallas.com will continue to publish daily. The Al Día team is now reporting into the same content areas as reporters from The Dallas Morning News in an effort to better serve the growing Latino community in North Texas. This community is not only our future, but it is the present, and it deserves enhanced coverage from our newsroom."
Katrice Hardy, Dallas Morning News managing editor, also commented via email to SPJ, explaining that stories will "continue to be written and published in Spanish as they always have." She added that the Al Día staff will be integrated into other teams for the following reasons: "So that all the DMN teams begin to learn how to write for this audience and so that Al Día has the chance to write more enterprising content. Al Día staff will still write content in Spanish. But in this new structure, other staff on their teams will also write stories with this lens and we will have other stories to augment the traditional Al Día content, which will remain mostly local and not wire."
Our original story continues below.
"It's unfortunate that a prominent Spanish-language newspaper in Texas that has served its community for 19 years is closing," said Eleanore Vega, chair of the Society of Professional Journalists' Diversity and Inclusion Committee, and Daniela Ibarra, vice-chair and SPJ director at large. "It gives the appearance that it is not of value to the community it's supposed to serve. We hope the publisher and editors at the Dallas Morning News will reconsider their decision."
The closing of The Dallas Morning News’ Spanish-language newspaper is part of a trend of news publishers cutting Spanish-language coverage. Over the past four years, The New York Times, BuzzFeed News Mexico and HuffPost Mexico stopped producing Spanish-language coverage.
Al Día's print product will continue, as will its website. But its journalists will no longer create original reporting written in Spanish.
In a statement about Al Día’s closure, the Dallas News Guild said, “Dismantling this team affects not only the employees but also the entire Hispanic community of North Texas.”
According to census data, Spanish is the most common non-English language spoken in U.S. homes., by not providing news content in Spanish the Dallas Morning News is doing a disservice to a large portion of Americans.
Due to the lack of original reporting, false political information is more likely to reach U.S. Latinx communities. More original news content created in Spanish would prevent misinformation from spreading or going unchecked.
In the Dallas News Guild statement, the staff said "It is with sadness that the Al Día team believes it has no choice but to accept the company's decision."
