Zohran Mamdani visited a Midtown Manhattan studio early this month to sit for an interview on a new podcast focused on Latino issues. As the Democratic nominee for mayor in a city with 2.5 million Hispanics, it felt like a no-brainer.
But after a few pleasantries, the hosts, Jorge and Paola Ramos, pivoted to tougher questions.
How, they asked, did Mr. Mamdani plan to explain the fact that he was a democratic socialist to Latino immigrants who had escaped repressive socialist regimes? What did he think of the leaders of Cuba and Venezuela?
“I wonder,” said Mr. Ramos, the former news anchor for Univision, “if you’re reluctant to call them dictators.”
“I’m not. I’m not reluctant,” said Mr. Mamdani, looking increasingly uncomfortable. “I just haven’t thought about them that often.”
That kind of revealing, intimate exchange is exactly what Mr. Ramos and Paola, his daughter and a regular contributor to MSNBC and Telemundo, hope to capture with their new podcast, The Moment. The podcast premieres on Wednesday with Mr. Mamdani’s 40-minute long interview.
But they are also aiming for something bigger, too. Their goal, they said in several interviews, was to reach an audience that they think is much underserved in American news media: English-speaking Latinos.
About one in five people in the United States today is Hispanic, a huge and fast-growing demographic. For decades, many media executives assumed that the best way to reach that audience was in Spanish. But the growth among Latinos is driven not by immigrants, but those born in this country, a group far less likely to seek news in Spanish, even if they can speak the language.
In many ways, Mr. and Ms. Ramos embody that change. The podcast is the English-language debut for Mr. Ramos, 67, a Mexican immigrant who last December stepped down as the anchor of Univision’s prime-time news show after 37 years. Ms. Ramos, who is 38, was born in the United States and though she is fully bilingual, considers English her primary language.
“Can you merge this audience that grew up listening to my dad with the younger English-speaking Latino audience that I’m part of?” Ms. Ramos asked. “Is there a world in which we can all be in the same place?”
Attempts to serve up content that appeals to that audience, while still drawing a meaningful share of those who still primarily speak Spanish, have proven challenging. Past high-profile efforts include Fusion, an English-language venture between Disney and Univision that was introduced with much fanfare in 2013 but never gained momentum, and NBC Latino, a stand-alone site that did not live up to expectations. But there have been some signs of traction: Futuro Media, a nonprofit journalism organization that produces several podcasts, has amassed a large loyal audience and won major awards for its work.
“There is a void to be filled,” said Alex López Negrete, chief executive of Lopez Negrete Communications, a Hispanic marketing firm founded in 1985. In the past, he said, essentially all the work his firm did was in Spanish, but today he said it’s “half and half.”
Carlos Eduardo Espina, a news influencer with a total of more than 15 million followers on TikTok and Instagram, said that while he speaks Spanish exclusively in his videos, most of the comments on them are in English.
“It’s not a very black or white panorama because I think there’s a lot of overlap,” said Mr. Espina, who mostly posts about politics. “I have been able to reach English-speaking audiences without having to make content in English.”
The Moment is being distributed weekly by iHeartMedia, which has been leaning heavily into the Hispanic market through its My Cultura Podcast Network, started in 2021. My Cultura’s slate of 60 Latino-focused podcasts includes shows hosted by celebrities like Eva Longoria as well as titles focused on emerging music, lucha libre wrestling and L.G.B.T.Q.+ issues; all but six of them are in English or a mix of the two languages.
According to Will Pearson, president of iHeart’s podcast division, the company is funding a full year, or 45 episodes, of the Ramos podcast. The show is also being recorded on video and will be available on YouTube. The deal includes a profit-sharing agreement with Mr. and Ms. Ramos. iHeart brought on Radio Ambulante Studios, a podcast producer known for high-quality narrative journalism in Spanish and English, to produce The Moment.
“We wanted to do a show that was about U.S. politics and culture, about this strange time we’re living through but from a Latino perspective, so it made sense to do it in English,” said Daniel Alarcón, Radio Ambulante’s executive producer, who among other projects produced a narrative series for The New York Times last year. In addition to Mr. Mamdani, early episodes include interviews with the actor John Leguizamo; the novelist Isabel Allende; and Anthony Romero, executive director of the A.C.L.U.
But few would dispute that the biggest draw is Mr. Ramos.
A staple in Hispanic households, he gained national prominence in 2015 when he was physically pushed out of a news conference after Donald J. Trump, then a presidential candidate, told him to “go back to Univision” when he tried to ask a question. After the network conducted a decidedly friendly interview of Mr. Trump in 2023, Mr. Ramos protested, posting on his website that it “put in doubt the independence of our news department.”
After leaving Univision, he started a daily news show in Spanish called Así Veo las Cosas, or This Is How I See It. The show, which is partially funded by a grant from the nonprofit Marguerite Casey Foundation, has so far drawn 223,000 subscribers to its new YouTube account since it began in June.
Still, Mr. Ramos has become convinced that it is essential to reach an English-speaking audience if he wants to have influence — and a viable media business. “It’s simply a matter of numbers,” he said.
After her parents divorced when she was young, Ms. Ramos mostly grew up in Madrid, far from her father. And unlike him, she had a career before journalism, working for President Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign, serving in his administration and then taking a position in Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign before jumping to the digital news outlet Vice and, later, regular roles at MSNBC and Telemundo.
Although Ms. Ramos had occasionally talked to her father about working together, that never took shape until Mr. Alarcón reached out to Mr. Ramos after hearing that he would be leaving Univision. Radio Ambulante was already part of iHeartMedia’s MyCultura network and, after a few shared meals to discuss the idea, he helped bring all the moving pieces together.
“The show is very much the relationship between Jorge and Paola, father and daughter,” Mr. Alarcón said. “That conversation is kind of linguistically slippery. It’s in Spanish, in English and in Spanglish.”
León Krauze, a journalist who worked with Mr. Ramos at Univision for many years before abruptly departing a week after the interview with Mr. Trump, stressed the special connection that newscasters build with Hispanic audiences, one that has no real analog.
“The real bond is an emotional one,” Mr. Krauze said. “They don’t relate to you as a figure of authority, as someone bringing the news. They relate to you as someone they have seen cry or talk about their children on air.”
Ms. Ramos says she is acutely aware that a growing number of Latinos — about one in four, according to the Pew Research Center — speak little or no Spanish at all. That cohort is sometimes called “No Sabo Kids,” a slang term derived from a faulty conjugation of a common irregular verb.
“So many of my friends who are Latino don’t speak Spanish at all and a lot of them haven’t found a place where they feel comfortable,” Ms. Ramos said, casting the show as content open to all Hispanics. “Where do the No Sabo Kids go?”
Her father, for his part, sees the podcast as an opportunity to meet an important political moment in a language and format that has the best chance to bring in relevant guests. After all, Mr. Mamdani may be vying for New York’s Latino vote, but he doesn’t speak Spanish.
“I think we are pioneers,” Mr. Ramos said. “which is interesting.”
Ken Bensinger covers media and politics for The Times.
Jennifer Medina is a Los Angeles-based political reporter for The Times, focused on political attitudes and demographic change.
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