Hispanic Heritage Month is coming up.
Sept. 15-Oct. 15 marks Hispanic Heritage Month across the United States. It is an exciting time for community radio to highlight its programming for diversity and inclusion.
What can your station do for Hispanic Heritage Month?
- Work with others. Look at potential local partnerships with nonprofits serving the Hispanic community and culture.
- Link up with local events for Hispanic Heritage Month. If there is an event in your city, make it an objective for your community radio station to be there.
- Share voices that represent community diversity. More studies indicate old perceptions of Latinos have faded. Young Latinos are increasingly English-primary speakers, tech savvy and media aware. How is your station connecting with them?
- How are you listening? When it comes to an increasingly young, English-primary Latino demographic, how is your station sounding to them? Take a long look at your community radio station’s allies and see where you can improve.
- Ask how your programming appeals to different constituencies. By no measure does this mean create all-Spanish programming though. As the KPCC Brown Paper (pdf) reports, tweaking how conversations played out and the ways programming strikes a particular tone is far more important than language.
- Evaluate your organization for inclusion and set goals. Diversity is also about how your board and station is recruiting and from where. Consider setting annual goals around diversity.
Community radio can build its audience during Hispanic Heritage Month. Some focus and attention to details will help immensely.
