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Happy Tuesday night from the East Coast. We are in the middle of The Latino Newsletter's 50th week.
Late last week, I went on LinkedIn to share the amazing realization that this nonprofit outlet, which was just an idea last May, had become something more. This is what I wrote:
Minutes before I posted that, I still wasn’t sure The Latino Newsletter would continue, and I still had a few days until a full year was over. So it wasn’t fear about my doubts, and I wasn’t just trying to convince myself. But in the weeks leading up to that moment, a few things had started to shift. Because of all those events, I felt more at peace with whatever would happen. I think every founder has to accept that truth, or else they’ll just chase to chase. And chasing just to chase is exhausting and impossible to sustain. It became clear that what I posted wasn’t just hopeful. It was actually true.
Here’s why:
The April 15 launch of the Latino Media Content Hub from the Latino Media Consortium. You can learn why here.
The official word, also in April, when the Internal Revenue Service granted us our nonprofit status.
News of our Boston expansion with the debut of our freelance multimedia journalist, thanks to support from the Boston Foundation's Community Leadership Pathway. Our first story will publish on Friday.
Our San Juan bureau is starting up and right on plan.
Our first collaboration with our friends at CALÓ News, called “Second Chances, First Steps.”
All these developments are the final pieces of a foundational puzzle that is still missing a few pieces. I’m happy to report that the remaining pieces will soon be in place, and you all will be the first to know when we are ready to share them.
In the meantime, we keep moving forward, focusing on a strategic plan that our Board approved earlier this year. We’ve already achieved a few of those goals. But the more ambitious ones, the ones that will make The Latino Newsletter a small nonprofit with a core production and leadership team, are still to come.
We will meet those 2025 goals, and we will stretch our wings some more this year. That’s the exciting part.
In the short term, we will continue to deliver the work for the Latino Media Content Hub, feature our new work out of Boston, file more stories from our San Juan bureau, keep taking pitches and paying freelancers, and present our original podcast ideas for funding.
If you ever have questions about any of this work, feel free to connect with me anytime.
The future is bright for The Latino Newsletter. To think that it wasn't even an idea a year ago.
Hit it, Nas.
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What We’re Reading
Connect Puerto Rico: Our friends at Connect Puerto Rico have dropped their latest edition. You can always subscribe here.
Julio Ricardo Varela is the founder of The Latino Newsletter. He is also its current part-time publisher and executive director. Email him here.
Consider donating to The Latino Newsletter. Any little bit helps to keep this newsletter free and accessible to all. ¡Gracias mil!