The City Council approved legislation on Thursday, June 17, to create the NYC Mayor’s Office of Ethnic and Community Media, making it the first mayor’s office in the country dedicated to strengthening the relationship between city government and ethnic and community outlets.

 

The legislation, known as Intro. 2313, was sponsored by Council Speaker Corey Johnson, Manhattan Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez, Bronx Council Member Oswald Feliz (C.D. 15), and Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams. Johnson is currently running for city comptroller, and on June 19, was endorsed as second-choice candidate for the role by the Bronx Democratic Party, which had previously given their first-choice ranking to Brian Benjamin.

 

Feliz is defending his seat in the upcoming District 15 primary, having just won it in the March 23 special election, while Adams is running in the upcoming primary for mayor. All are actively campaigning and are in regular contact with a range of citywide media outlets. Meanwhile, Rodriguez is finishing out his last term in District 10.

 

In reference to the new law, Adams said the diversity of the city is represented well in its ethnic and community media outlets throughout the five boroughs. “I truly appreciate the critical role these outlets play in empowering our communities, and I will continue working to expand the resources they need to continue bringing vital information to New Yorkers,” he said.

 

In May 2019, Mayor Bill de Blasio issued executive order 47 (EO 47), which required all mayoral agencies to direct at least 50 percent of their annual print and digital advertising budgets toward community and ethnic media.

 

In a recent op-ed in The New York Times, Sarah Bartlett, dean of the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, part of the CUNY network, commended the action, writing that the school’s Center for Ethnic and Community Media found that the executive order had helped sustain small, independent media outlets in every corner of the city at a time when newsrooms, nationwide, were laying off reporters and when some were even closing down.

 

“These media outlets are often their communities’ most trusted sources of information,” Bartlett wrote. “They publish in more than 30 languages throughout the five boroughs, serving immigrants, ethnic and religious groups and communities of color.”

 

The op-ed included a link to an open letter signed by over 59 editors and publishers, including the editor of the Norwood News, to City and State officials, in which they wrote that without advertising from city agencies, many of their publications would not have survived the pandemic.

 

Additionally, nonprofit news publications, such as the Norwood News, which publishes both in print and online, incurring different costs for each medium, are precluded, for example, from accepting any political advertising.

 

Local and ethnic media outlets were also heavily relied upon by the City administration in communicating to New Yorkers on the importance of completing the 2020 census.

 

Now, Int. 2313-A, EO 47 will be codified and expanded, requiring by law that all municipal agencies seek to direct at least 50 percent of their annual print, digital, television, and radio advertising budgets towards community and ethnic media. The approved legislation has been sent to the mayor’s office to be signed into law.

 

The new office will be responsible, among other things, for overseeing the distribution of advertising resources by agencies, developing a list of approved ethnic and community media outlets, and conducting training for city officials and employees responsible for purchasing advertising.

 

As recently reported, the Norwood News website is available in Spanish, Bengali, French, Arabic and Chinese, in addition to English. Readers can translate the site from English into each of these languages by selecting the relevant language from the drop-down menu located in the top, right-hand corner of the home page.

 

As a nonprofit news organization, with limited resources, we decided to include this translation function on our site to help our community of readers access local news in a way that we hope is more accessible. As previously stated, we wish to highlight, however, that the translation of the site into languages other than English is intended solely as a convenience to the non-English-reading community and to those residents with limited English proficiency, and that the translation is not legally binding.

 

The Google Translate function is based on artificial intelligence. As such, there is no human intervention checking the accuracy of the translation. From a legal standpoint, the English language version of the site will always take precedence.

 

The Norwood News was recognized in two categories in 2020 by The New York Press Association for its coverage of the news.

 

Editor’s Note: Síle Moloney, Norwood News editor, is a graduate of the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism.