Did you know the first printed news in the Americas was published in Mexico, in Spanish, more than a hundred years before Ben Franklin and English-language newspapers? And that the first printing press on the continent was brought to Mexico City in 1535? I didn’t know, until I listened to Felix Gutierrez, a professor of journalism and communication at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School, when he visited the University of Minnesota in September as a guest of the journalism school. He’s an impressive scholar, and the pre-eminent historian of Latino media in the United States.
The beginnings of the Latino press in this country go back more than 200 years to a New Orleans newspaper called El Misisipi…[more]