WGBO, Chicago Reporter Form News Team

Univision-owned WGBO Chicago (DMA 3) and The Chicago Reporter are joining forces to create Latinext, a cross-newsroom, cross-platform, bilingual news team to address the information needs of the 2.1 million strong Latinx community in the Chicago region.

The companies say that by “combining the deep roots and reach of Univision Chicago with the more than four-decade legacy of data-driven, investigative journalism of The Chicago Reporter, this project will increase civic, bilingual reporting power in the Midwest and spark collaborations among local media around issues that are important to the Latino community.”

These issues range from such topics as housing, health care, education and immigration and topical issues like the 2020 Census and the upcoming presidential election.

Latinext will focus on highlighting Chicago’s rising Latino voices, in Spanish and English, while reporting on and engaging with the growing and changing Latino community.

Its initial focus will be on Aurora, Elgin, Berwyn, Joliet, Waukegan and other communities that are far outside the typical coverage zones of mainstream media and the new ports of entry for immigrants. “This focus also positions us to better cover the region’s changing demographics and the suburbanization of poverty, which will be core to fulfilling the reporter’s mission,” the companies added.

Latinext is hiring and training a team of bilingual journalists who will produce content in English and Spanish that will be featured on Univision’s TV, radio and digital platforms as well as The Chicago Reporter and other platforms. The resulting content that is created will appear on WGBO news programs (around 200,000 viewers per day), radio shows, websites (132,000 impressions per day), and social media (1.8 million followers on Facebook) as well as on ChicagoReporter.com.

Latinext will be managed by Fernando Díaz, editor and publisher of The Chicago Reporter and Teri Arvesu WGBO’s head of content.