NJ Spotlight Collaborates With Montclair State University’s Center For Cooperative Media To Bring Spanish Content To Its Website

July 27, 2020 – Newark, NJ – NJ Spotlight, the affiliate of New Jersey public television’s NJTV News, and Montclair State University’s Center for Cooperative Media, have announced a collaboration to translate NJ Spotlight news stories into Spanish. The translated content, which is focused on COVID-19, now appears in a new online section of NJSpotlight.com called EN ESPAÑOL.

As COVID-19 continues to impact lives across the state, this initiative aims to provide Spanish-speaking communities in New Jersey with information from a statewide and policy perspective about the virus and how it affects the state budget, immigration, housing, education, environment and more.The new section on NJSpotlight.com is a result of a COVID-19 translation initiative lead by the Center for Cooperative Media and supported with funding from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation.

“This partnership highlights the multilingual, multicultural journalism and collaboration that our diverse communities need today, especially in the midst of a pandemic,” said Stefanie Murray, director of the Center.

On a weekly basis, the Center selects at least two stories published by NJ Spotlight which are then translated into Spanish by media partner Reporte Hispano, the state’s largest Spanish-language newspaper, and posted on NJSpotlight.com. The translated stories are made available for republication to all members of the NJ News Commons.

“Now more than ever, it’s important to keep all New Jerseyans informed about the impact of COVID-19 on our daily lives and public policy, and we’re proud to share more of that critical information directly with our Spanish-speaking neighbors,” said NJ Spotlight Founding Editor John Mooney.

“The [NJ Spotlight] stories that we translated into Spanish provide timely and firsthand information on COVID-19 to the more than 1.8 million Latinos that we serve in New Jersey, representing nearly 21 percent of the state’s population,” said Kleibeel Marcano, editor of Reporte Hispano, who translates the stories. “There are certain English terms, like ‘flu-like symptoms,’ that may be vague for Spanish readers. That’s why a nuanced translation, culturally and linguistically, is crucial to mitigate language barriers and narrow information gaps in the Latino immigrant community, most especially during this unprecedented public health crisis.”

According to the Census Bureau, one in four homes speaks a language other than English in New Jersey, with Spanish being the most frequently spoken language in the state after English. And this population is being strongly affected by COVID-19, with statistics showing that Latinos in New Jersey are dying at the second-highest rate from the virus.

With the mission of keeping the public informed, without paywalls, about coronavirus news, both NJ Spotlight and the Center for Cooperative Media have created daily newsletters dedicated to the topic. NJ Spotlight and NJTV News also collaborated on their own Coronavirus Information Hub, accessible at NJTVNews.org/coronavirus.

Through its translation initiative, the Center has also worked with partners from The Korea Daily and Sing Tao Daily to translate NJ Spotlight and NorthJersey.com COVID-19 stories in Korean and Chinese. Those articles are also available for republication, accessible from the Center’s daily COVID-19 newsletter.

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About NJ Spotlight and NJTV News

NJTV News and NJ Spotlight comprise the news division of NJTV, New Jersey’s public television network. Each are trusted, member-supported, award-winning independent news sources working in tandem to provide multi-platform reporting across the Garden State and producing live news specials and hosting roundtable discussions.

About the Center for Cooperative Media

The Center is a grant-funded program of the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. Its mission is to grow and strengthen local journalism, and in doing so serve New Jersey residents. The Center is supported with funding from Montclair State University, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Democracy Fund, the New Jersey Local News Lab (a partnership of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Democracy Fund, and Community Foundation of New Jersey), and the Abrams Foundation.

For more information, visit  CenterforCooperativeMedia.org