ImpreMedia is big and getting bigger.
That's correct. ImpreMedia has become the leading publisher of Spanish
language newspapers in the U.S. Our company publishes seven top-notch
newspapers: El Diario / La Prensa and El Diario Contigo
in New York, La Opinión and La Opinión
Contigo in Los Angeles, La Raza in Chicago, El
Mensajero in the San Francisco Bay area, and now La Prensa
in Central Florida.
Why Florida now?
By adding Central Florida with La Prensa, we expand the unmatched footprint that we provide to advertisers, particularly national advertisers. We are now in four top Hispanic states: California, New York, Illinois and now Florida. Our six markets – Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay area, Chicago, New York, and now Orlando and Tampa are home to over 37% of the U.S. Hispanic population, or more than 16 million Hispanics. We also open the door to greater cooperation between La Prensa and our other properties. La Opinión in Los Angeles is itself alone the nation's largest Spanish language daily newspaper. We are building an irresistible platform for national advertisers that features high quality local journalism – newspapers that are really in touch with their communities and have unbeatable market penetration.
How big is the Hispanic community in Central Florida?
The Hispanic community in Central Florida is big and growing – and it is growing faster than the rest of Florida. From 2002 to 2004, Central Florida’s Hispanic population grew by 11 percent to more than 847,000 while the rest of the state showed a lower growth rate of 8 percent. And their buying power is even more impressive. Hispanics are now pumping something like $13 billion a year into the economy of Central Florida.
You have been honored as one of the most important Latino leaders in the U.S.
I am honored to be cited that way, but clearly I am not Latino. The honor is a result of my running a company so vitally important to the Hispanic community in the U.S. I’m actually an English-speaking Canadian, who can also get by in French, who was born in Scotland. So I know a little something about diversity. But my real expertise is finding and adding value to media companies – and that crosses all cultural lines. This is my contribution to ImpreMedia. ImpreMedia’s core strengths lie with its employees who are Hispanic and its executives like Jose Lozano, our Vice Chairman, and Monica Lozano, our Senior Vice President and publisher of La Opinión in Los Angeles. Along with Rossana Rosado, our publisher at El Diario in New York, we have a leadership corps that understands the communities we serve and one that has the skill and knowledge required to produce the most compelling newspapers for Hispanics in the U.S.
Our local editors and star reporters already have regional fame, but I think they will soon be recognized as some of the most important contributors to this country when the value of what we are building is fully appreciated. I expect them to compete for and win the same awards that today go to English language papers like the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune. Within the Hispanic community, we already dominate – ImpreMedia publications won the most industry-sponsored journalism awards for 2004. I bet we repeat that performance again when our efforts for 2005 are recognized. Our editors, reporters, and photographers are that good.
What is your own background?
I came up first on the editorial side. I have a journalism degree from Ryerson University in downtown Toronto. Ryerson is the kind of working campus where most of us had jobs while we were undergraduates. It did and does believe in a hands-on approach to learning. Our most illustrious alumni are probably Isadore Sharp who founded the Four Seasons hotel chain and Eric McCormack who stars in Will & Grace on NBC. Successful Ryerson graduates tend to be people who know the value of hard work and an earned education.
Did you begin as a reporter?
No, my first job was as a copy boy on the Toronto Sun, part of the Sun Media newspaper chain in Canada. From there I went on to become a reporter, a columnist, a city editor and then finally an editor-in-chief. I eventually crossed the aisle and learned the business side of newspapers, ultimately becoming publisher and CEO of a number of daily newspapers. Sun Media provided me with great training and great mentors like Doug Creighton, who founded the chain, and Paul Godfrey, who took it to its greatest heights of success. I became vice president of Sun Media and was part of a very talented team of executives, led by Paul, who bought the company in a leverage buyout in the mid-90s. We went on to build Sun Media into the second biggest Canadian newspaper company and it became the most successful newspaper leveraged buyout ever done in Canada.
Those are skills you don’t learn as a copy boy.
You’d be surprised what you learn as a copy boy. But I’ve added to that training since. I have been involved in taking a public company private – and I’ve done high-yield debt financings, further leveraged buyouts and initial public offerings since then. There’s nothing like the pressure of on-the-job training to make you learn. I also took some time out in the late 90s and completed the finance curriculum that Harvard Business School offers to senior executives. So I can both write the words and grind the numbers with the best of them and have developed something of a reputation as a specialist in the roll-up and turnaround of newspaper companies. I am now committed to creating the premier Spanish language newspaper company in the United States by acquiring, launching, clustering and integrating dailies, weeklies and related publications in key U.S. Hispanic markets. We are profit-oriented, committed to quality in our consolidation, and the owners of premier resources in a rapidly growing industry. We now boast the largest editorial group and advertising sales group in our market – and that will be hard to replicate if anyone decides to try.
How easy a sell is it to bring national advertisers to your newspaper chain?
It is never "easy" to convince advertisers of anything
but we have an easier time than most because we have such a compelling
story to tell. Hispanic purchasing power is expected to grow at
three times the national average. Nationwide, the 43 million Hispanics
in the U.S. wield roughly $700 billion in purchasing power which
ranks U.S. Hispanics as the No. 3 Spanish-speaking economic power
in the world, as measured by GDP, and they will probably be No.
2 by 2010.
However, there is a substantial gap to be bridged between the proportion of dollars spent on Hispanic-targeted newspaper advertising and the amount spent on English-language newspapers. Our revenue growth has come from creating a national platform to bridge that gap. The market is hugely under-penetrated. We distribute more than 1.9 million copies every week and have the leading brands for Spanish-language newspapers in the U.S.
Does ImpreMedia really match up against what the larger metropolitan newspapers can offer to an advertiser?
Yes. Take La Opinión for example. It’s the second-most read newspaper in Los Angeles in any language. Additionally, on average, a single issue of the paper reaches more people than one prime time spot on either the local Univision or Telemundo stations, and more people than one morning drive-time spot on each of the top five local Spanish-language radio stations combined.
And you can't
rip out a Tide soap discount coupon from a TV or radio ad and
carry to the grocery store. You can do that, however, if you saw
it in the newspaper.
Of course,
you don't get readership by just running powerful ads. I know
how important the independence and professionalism of a newspaper’s
editorial staff is to its readers. We have great local teams at
each newspaper and we are making them stronger. We are adding
to that mix all the time and we are paying special attention to
our advertising staff too. We expect the best and deliver the
best.
Was it hard to convince the owners, Dora Casanova de Toro and her husband, Manuel, to join ImpreMedia?
Dora and Manuel founded the paper twenty-five years ago when the Hispanic community in Central Florida was relatively small. The Toros are not only integral to the great success story of La Prensa but they also play central roles in the dynamic growth of the Hispanic community in Orlando. I believe they chose ImpreMedia because they see ImpreMedia as the right custodians of both the history and the future of La Prensa. They were excited by the growth opportunity that ImpreMedia provides for their readers, advertisers and especially their employees who are now part of a national media company. I think the Toro family saw that ImpreMedia comes in with a strong commitment to the Hispanic community in each of its acquisitions. That is matched with a fierce determination at each of our publications to produce high-quality Spanish-language journalism that reports fairly and enthusiastically on the community where it is based. When those stories have national significance, they have a national network that will pick up the news and relay it across the country.
Was financing such a rapidly growing company difficult?
Not at all. Both our investors and our lenders know that we have a great track record in being able to pull together assets like these in the publishing industry and that we know how to create real value in doing so. Our Chief Financial Officer, Steve Greenberg, found us the right lending partner when he brought in the Goldman Sachs Specialty Lending Group, L.P. We are particularly happy they are again providing financing on this transaction. They backed us on the acquisition of El Mensajero in the San Francisco Bay area as well. They've been great partners.
Is ImpreMedia at all concerned about web competition?
We aren't concerned about it so much as we are excited to be a
part of it too. When you have seven major newspapers in some of
the largest and fastest-growing Hispanic markets in the U.S.,
you have also created an ideal platform for online information.
La Opinión Digital is the flagship of that effort at ImpreMedia.
The La Opinión Digital website has 1 million unique
visitors clicking in each month from all over the country and
is now beginning to draw a healthy set of online advertisers itself
including prestigious clients. The online advertising income from
La Opinión Digital and our sister webpages in
Chicago, San Francisco, New York, and Orlando will one day soon
rival that of their print counterparts. We don’t fear the
online future at ImpreMedia, we have warmly embraced it. To demonstrate
this, we have enlisted our Vice Chairman, Jose Lozano, to spearhead
our online efforts. ◙◙◙
