El Diario, Splashy Latino Newspaper, Debuts in L.A.

The competition for Latino readers and advertising dollars in the Southland has heated up with the debut this week of the area’s third Spanish-language daily newspaper--El Diario de Los Angeles, which aims to distinguish itself with heavy doses of local news, splashy color photos and a touch of sensationalism.

“It’s not going to be easy,” said El Diario’s publisher, Jose Luis Becerra, 55, who also runs a Mexican news agency and who founded a chain of newspapers in Mexico City at age 22. “But it’s our intention to focus on local coverage in general news, sports and features.

“It’s not going to be a paper written by Mexicans about Mexico,” he said. “We will be a paper of Mexicans made for Mexicans in this area.”

Bankrolled by a group of Mexican businessmen and journalists with an initial investment of $3.7 million, El Diario made its first appearance Tuesday at 3,500 Los Angeles newsstands and stores, located primarily in areas with large Latino populations, such as East Los Angeles and Pacoima. Becerra said the paper sold 65,000 copies--at 25 cents each--of its 24-page, three-part inaugural edition.

The paper, which will published seven days a week, is divided into three sections. The first section features local, national and international news, the second portion is devoted to sports, and the third, a combination entertainment-society-gossip section loaded with photos of scantily clad women, is reminiscent of racy Mexican tabloids.

And, unlike its competitors, El Diario features large color photographs, which should increase its appeal, some advertising and newspaper officials say.

The paper has 12 reporters--some of whom came from rival publications--and seven editors, who work out of a renovated carpet plant south of downtown Los Angeles. The printing presses are also located there.

The paper predicts that it will be profitable and attain circulation of 100,000 by the end of the year.Besides being distributed at newsstands and stores, the paper plans to focus its circulation in areas with large numbers of Mexican immigrant workers.

It plans eventually to expand distribution to Orange County.

Can Los Angeles support three profitable Spanish-language dailies? Most observers seem to think so.

“There is definitely room for three,” said Laura Marella, media director for Casanova Pendrill, a Los Angeles advertising agency that specializes in Spanish-language ads.

She noted that the combined circulation of the three dailies reaches only 180,000, compared to the 3 million Latinos who live in Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Orange counties.

“There is a need for increased penetration in the Spanish-language market,” she said. El Diario’s two daily competitors--61-year-old La Opinion and 2 1/2-year-old Noticias del Mundo (owned by a company controlled by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church)--are split on whether the market can support three profitable Spanish-language daily papers.

The large Latino population in Los Angeles could support not just three daily Spanish-language papers but perhaps many more, according to Alberto Mesones, interim city editor for the Los Angeles edition of Noticias, which has a reported circulation of 55,000. Introduced to Los Angeles in October, 1984, Noticias has yet to turn a profit, according to industry reports.

At La Opinion, founded in 1926, publisher Jose Lozano disagrees. “The community that we serve is by and large an immigrant population; they don’t have the newspaper-reading habit to begin with.” That makes it difficult to attract readers and advertisers, said Lozano, whose paper has a daily circulation of about 80,000.

But Lozano doesn’t look at El Diario as a direct competitor. “They’re directed to the Mexican immigrant,” he said. “We have a broader base” among not only Mexicans but others from Central and South America. “It’s taken us a long time to attract major retail and national advertising because of the (circulation) numbers we have. We’re pushing 100,000,” which he calls “the magic number” for big national advertisers.