Two Years of Our Stories, All the Time

BOSTON — Two years ago this month, I posted a tweet about an idea I had after agreeing to become a founding member of the Latino Media Consortium, and 121 people said yes before there was anything real to say yes to.

I didn’t have a business plan. There was no funding or a board of directors. Just a tweet (or whatever they call it these days), a URL available for $12, and a growing sense that the daily void in Latino community journalism was too real to ignore any longer.

Today is the launch of our second birthday campaign (yes, we turn 2 this May!), and I want to take a moment to explain the why, not because I haven’t tried to explain it before, but after two years, with more than 500 published stories written by a combined group of 120 contributors and an original and ambitious podcast launching on July 4, I wanted to hat-tip the past before we forge ahead.

Three things were happening at once in the spring of 2024. Latino journalists — people I admired and knew personally — were losing their jobs at an accelerating pace, right before a critical election cycle, and the stories about our communities were decreasing.

At the same time, I was watching the newsletter-first media model grow, mostly behind paywalls, and the obvious platform for it was Substack, but it was welcoming Nazis to the platform. (Apparently, they still do.) As you might imagine, that wasn’t going to work for me (understatement), and I decided to host The Latino Newsletter on Beehiiv.

And I was unemployed, which is exactly what happened in 2011, when I founded Latino Rebels, and that unemployment led to 13 years of journalism and media work that shaped everything I have done since.

So the instinct was familiar, even though I was scared: why not build something? Why not a nonprofit? Why not free with no paywalls, no paid tiers, no barriers between our journalism and the communities we are meant to serve? Why not, as I put it from the very beginning, about us, all the time?

Within 25 days of that first tweet, we had 381 subscribers, a board, and our first funder. The Latino Community Foundation gave us a $20,000 grant to power our first phase of election coverage, and we were off and running. (All thanks to the Tiny News Collective as our fiscal sponsor before our IRS 501(c)(3) status was official in 2025.)

By the end of 2024, we had partnered with New England Public Media on the Latino Election Project, launched a biweekly podcast, and our work was being featured on the BBC, MSNBC, WBUR, and CBS News, among others. We also raised thousands of dollars from individual donors. I was still solo with a freelance producer.

Then 2025 arrived, and everything accelerated. The Boston Foundation helped us expand our coverage in Eastern Massachusetts. The Mellon Foundation believed in us and awarded us a six-figure grant. We launched a San Juan bureau that has already drawn local and national attention. We also welcomed a new host of The Latino Newsletter podcast. We partnered with El Planeta in Boston, grew our contributor base, increased our team, amplified our reach, and never once put up a paywall.

Then 2026 arrived with even more momentum. We joined INN and LION Publishers, and now, two years in, with more than 3,300 newsletter subscribers across platforms, a nearly 60% open rate, and a combined social audience of more than 27,000 — all organic — we are counting down to the July 4 launch of American Colony, our first long-form bilingual podcast series.

We are running a birthday campaign with a goal of $25,000. Your support will keep us going so we can produce more reported stories, podcast episodes, opinion pieces, investigative work, and voices that deserve to be uplifted.

Two years ago, 121 people said yes before there was anything real to say yes to. Today, we are asking you to say yes again.

JRV

A Boricua Derby: Some days I welcome a Boricua-heavy algorithm. Today was a prime example. Yeah, we win Kentucky Derbys too.

Fentanyl in Puerto Rico: Our San Juan columnist Susanne Ramírez de Arellano shared this new reported documentary from the UK’s Channel 4 about Puerto Rico’s fentanyl crisis. Susanne was part of the production team, and as she told us in our newsroom Slack channel, “I am very proud of this work.”

Who Doesn’t Love a Parade? I also had to share what Serena Maria Daniels of Midwest Mexican posted from Detroit — the city’s 61st annual Cinco de Mayo parade.

Congrats, Gustavo: And just as I was about to click “publish,” I got this fabulous update from Los Angeles Times columnist Gustavo Arellano, a 2026 Pulitzer finalist.

“Didn’t win, doesn’t matter,” Gustavo posted. “I want to thank all the people who trusted me with their stories, my editors for letting me do my thing, and my immigrant parents — especially my papi, who came in the trunk of a Chevy so long ago — for teaching me through words and deeds what immigrants bring to this country. Pulitzer finalist, two years in a row — still can’t believe it. Now, back to WERK.”

Julio Ricardo Varela is the founder of The Latino Newsletter. He is also its current part-time publisher and executive director. He edited and published this edition.