The News Media in Puerto Rico offers a synopsis as well as a critical analysis of the Island’s news media system, with emphasis on the political and economic factors that most influence how the media operate. The authors also document the impact of Hurricane Maria on the media structures and the changing media landscape given the political, economic and colonial strictures. Building on interviews with news media professionals, the book further presents detailed insights about journalism and journalism education in these times of crises. The final chapters include theoretical frameworks and methodological guidelines for the analysis of other colonial, post-colonial and neo-colonial media systems, with research recommendations valuable for future studies of the Island’s media as well as for cross-national comparisons. This book will be an essential read for students and scholars interested in learning not only about the Puerto Rican and Latin American mass media, but also the media systems of other colonial/neo-colonial countries.

“A truly excellent contribution that unearths new and largely unknown evidence about relationships between Puerto Ricans and African-Americans and white Americans in the continental United States and Puerto Rico. Alamo-Pastrana revises how race is to be studied and understood across national, cultural, colonial, and hierarchical cultural relations.”—Zaire Zenit Dinzey-Flores, author of Locked In, Locked Out: Gated Communities in a Puerto Rican City Puerto Rico’s colonial relationship with the United States and its history of intermixture of native, African, and Spanish inhabitants has prompted inconsistent narratives about race and power in the colonial territory. Departing from these accounts, early twentieth-century writers, journalists, and activists scrutinized both Puerto Rico’s and the United States’s institutionalized racism and colonialism in an attempt to spur reform, leaving an archive of oft-overlooked political writings. In Seams of Empire, Carlos Alamo-Pastrana uses racial imbrication as a framework for reading this archive of little-known Puerto Rican, African American, and white American radicals and progressives, both on the island and the continental United States. By addressing the concealed power relations responsible for national, gendered, and class differences, this method of textual analysis reveals key symbolic and material connections between marginalized groups in both national spaces and traces the complexity of race, racism, and conflict on the edges of empire.

This book presents the story of Ruby A. Black, a feminist who broke new ground for women in Washington journalism in the 1920s and 1930s as a correspondent for a Puerto Rican newspaper and the first biographer of Eleanor Roosevelt. It offers access to the secret correspondence that shows how Black used her friendship with Roosevelt to advance the political career of Luis Muñoz Marín, Puerto Rico's first elected governor. The book describes Black’s effort, ultimately unsuccessful, to become both a well-regarded journalist and a political operative in the nation’s capital, a feat particularly difficult for a woman. It contends Black’s closeness to Roosevelt proved both a help and a hindrance to Black’s stature as a journalist.

Provides short biographies of Latino American writers and journalists and information on their works.

This book offers a critical and practical guide for journalists reporting on issues affecting the Latinx community. Reporting on Latino/a/x Communities emphasizes skills and best practices for covering topics such as economics, immigration and gender. The authors share honest stories about challenges Latino/a/x journalists face in newsrooms, including imposter syndrome and lack of representation in news, along with strategies to face and tackle systematic barriers. Stories from leaders in the media industry are also featured, including journalists and media professionals from ABC News, Los Angeles Times, Alt.Latino at NPR, and mitú. Additionally highlighted are experimental and non-traditional new initiatives and outlets leading the future of news media for Latino/a/x audiences. This book is an invaluable guide for any student or journalist interested or involved in the news media and questions of Latino/a/x representation.