The San Fernando Valley Sun: The Old Newspaper with the Latest Local News
In the center of the city The San Fernando Sun can be found, a newspaper that has served the community of the Valley, since 1904. The building is easy to find because it has ivy growing on it walls. It is green and three stories tall. It has lots of empty offices and the building is not part of a chain of buildings. Right next door there are homes and some parking lots. This is one of the longest running newspapers in the area. The paper covers local stories that affect the communities within The Valley. They release a newspaper every week, but we can stay up to date with stories on their website.
Since its creation, The San Fernando Valley Sun has covered some of the most important stories of this country. It was around during the two world wars, the depression, the space race, and some of the biggest earthquakes to hit Los Angeles, like the 1994 Northridge earthquake, among other stories. The San Fernando Sun serves the community as a bilingual newspaper. The Spanish version of the paper is called El Sol del Valle de San Fernando. This site serves the many residents of the Valley who do not speak English or that prefer to get their news in that language. Since the community of the San Fernando Valley has a strong Spanish speaking influence, offering news in Spanish sounds like something natural for every news outlet from the Valley to offer.
The San Fernando Valley Sun has been around for so long, that in 2004 they were recognized by a congressperson on their 100th anniversary. Even though this is a publication that’s been around for over 100 years, they do not make that much money, so for this reason it is only published once a week. The content of the paper is not flashy or exiting; however, it keeps the community informed of what’s is going on in the community. To still be alive today, it has been bought by different groups that were interested in the paper. An LA Times article from 1994 talked about one of the ownership changes that happened. Fortunately for the readers the coverage has not gone away from local news; however, if a person only reads this paper, they won’t be fully informed of everything happening in the country.
The newspaper is bilingual for one simple reason. Forty-eight percent of the population in the Valley is Hispanic or Latino and forty percent is white according to Census Reporter data. This means there are lots of English speakers that might be interested in the local news and a slightly higher percentage of Hispanics who might want their news in Spanish. Census Reporter data shows that there are four hundred and fifty thousand people between the ages of eighteen to sixty-four years that speak Spanish in their households. The point here is that The San Fernando Valley Sun publishes in both languages so they get to as many households as possible. Alberto Partida, follows the paper on Facebook and says he reads it because it “keeps him up to date on all things happening in the Valley.” He reads the stories in English taking advantage of the fact the paper is bilingual. Cesar Lucero mentioned he does not read the paper, but he follows its Facebook. He likes “the updates,” on his phone. He added that if he is interested in a specific story, he goes to the website and reads the full story.
When I interviewed the sports writer from The San Fernando Valley Sun Mike Terry, he said the paper is a community newspaper. He added that it is free for the people to read and comes out weekly. During the conversation he added that they have a coverage that includes anything that involves the Valley. He said “we try to cover news that might not get covered in other outlets.” According to him, the paper has a mixed following of men and women. He said that for the most part the readers are older with some mix of younger readers. When I asked Mike Terry about their coverage on social media, he said they have an active Facebook page and an Instagram. He added they have Twitter, but looking at their Twitter page, it is clear they have not used it for a while. This could be the reason why they are followed mostly by older people, but is not the only reason.
According to Mike Terry, this outlet tries to help people as far as “the newspaper can help.” They try to give the community information that help take better decisions such as in getting an apartment or staying safe from immigration. Mike Terry said they are most active on Facebook and that is true because when researching the outlet, that is the place where the biggest concentration of stories is located at. Of course, during the research there was a fire during, but going back further, they had more stories and updates in their Facebook page. They also responded to questions on the comment section of each story and if their page did not answer, the other public following would do what they could to have an answer. That keeps the community involved in stories and it might make them try to find the story from other sources to find an answer. Maribel Torres does not read this newspaper because she likes to watch “the TV news.” She has read it though, “one time I read a story on sports when I used to play High School Volleyball, but it was more of a sports update.” Ms. Torres doesn’t read the Sun, but she is one of the people that could be targeted by the paper as a potential reader. This can happen by adding an application or with better use of more social media pages. An active Twitter page can be helpful and it can bring a younger crowd of readers to the paper.
