As the recession persists and mainstream newspapers close, ethnic media outlets face a different reality.

As a reporter for the daily Chinese newspaper in San Francisco Ming Pao, Vivian Po covered a variety of issues about the vast Chinese-American and immigrant population. She wrote stories on elder abuse, domestic violence and immigrant education. But last February, the newspaper’s offices in San Francisco and New York closed.

“I didn’t feel it coming that soon. I was completely shocked when I received the call,” said Po about receiving the news just days after returning from a vacation in her native Hong Kong.  

Ming Pao competed with four Chinese newspapers in the Bay Area. That reality coupled with the severe economic recession led to the newspaper’s demise, Po said.

Mainstream newsrooms across the country have been on the edge for several years. They’ve lost readers to free online news outlets and blogs and most recently the economic recession pushed several to either make dramatic changes or shut down. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer transitioned to strictly online content, and the Rocky Mountain News closed its doors earlier this year.

Ethnic media are also not safe from the crisis, as Ming Pao’s experience illustrates. But journalists in this industry said their fate might not be as grave as that of mainstream newspapers.

“At the beginning, the economic recession did not affect [ethnic media] as much, but since the recession became more severe eventually it affected ethnic communities and businesses, and since there is a chain reaction, it affected the bulk of ad revenue of ethnic media,” said Julian Do, the Southern California Director of New America Media, a news service and collective of ethnic news organizations. “However, their model is more resilient with standing up to the crisis. They are more flexible to cut backs… they won’t totally shut down [as mainstream media might]. A number of ethnic media did close, but when compared to mainstream, it pails in comparison.”

According to a study of ethnic media outlets conducted by the Center for Integration and Improvement of Journalism, 68.4 percent of media outlets considered the most important factor of their jobs to be providing a voice for their community, while success as a business was ranked third. The study also found that despite low to modest pay, 39 percent of participants stayed with their publication for 11 years or more, and 32 percent consider their organization healthy and as a place where there’s potential to grow.

According to NAM, ethnic journalism reaches more than 50 million Americans. Their own site features a directory of more than 2,000 print, radio and online media in 55 different languages.

Because ethnic media have never relied on big corporations for advertisers, their ad sales are not being greatly affected, said Juana Ponce de León, the executive director of the New York Community Media Alliance and editor of Voices That Must be Heard, a collective of ethnic press in New York City.  

“(Ethnic media) are not losing huge accounts and haven’t toppled economically because they are small, wide spread and have more of a flat foot,” she said. “Advertising is more of a mosaic of small businesses, causing no big holes in ad revenue as it would by big corporate advertisers.”

While ethnic newsrooms are expected to survive, journalists worry about what the shrinking newspaper industry might mean for media coverage. As a recent study conducted by the American Society of News Editors (ASNE) shows, 5,900 mainstream newsroom jobs were lost last year, 854 of which were held by people of color.

Voices That Must be Heard reflects the wide range of cultural diversity that exists in a metropolitan city. People from all over the world, including Pakistan, Colombia and Germany, are represented in the New York Community Media Alliance, something that Ponce de León says is lost when the journalists of color are fired from mainstream newsrooms.