Edmundo Escobedo Jr. wants the weekly newspaper he founded with his father almost half a century ago, El Mundo or The World in English, to be remembered as the last major Spanish-language paper in Las Vegas. 

And so even after its heyday, when the paper brimmed with news of every wedding, quinceañera and soccer match the family could attend and after the 100-page editions dwindled to 12, the family kept it going for as long as they could, delivering the free paper every week to newspaper stands at grocery stores and businesses frequented by the Latino community. 

The paper outlived Edmundo Escobedo Sr., who died in 2010 at the age of 77 after battling pancreatic cancer. An Air Force veteran, Escobedo Sr. was known as a pioneer in Southern Nevada’s Hispanic community for his work in media, business and politics. 

Pictures of his father with political figures such as former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama hang on the walls of Escobedo’s office in the Escobedo Professional Plaza, Las Vegas’ first Hispanic business center (though Escobedo notes his father also supported Republicans such as Ronald Reagan). 

But earlier this year, Escobedo, 64, knew the paper could no longer resist the pressures disrupting the media landscape, forcing newspapers across Nevada and nationwide to downsize, shift to online-only or close altogether as their reader base and advertiser basess shrank.

In late March, El Mundo said goodbye to its readers in its final weekly print edition. 

“I know my dad probably shed a tear in heaven, but he would look down and say, ‘I understand things change,’” Escobedo said during an April 22 interview at El Mundo’s office in East Las Vegas. “Unfortunately, will and drive doesn’t compete with the new technology that is available now.” 

El Mundo’s announcement came about four months after the Las Vegas Review-Journal announced it was ending its Spanish-language news coverage, including a Spanish-language newscast and a weekly Spanish newspaper that it founded in 1994 and became known as El Tiempo. The Review-Journal’s publisher and editor, Keith Moyer, said it “did not produce the readership and viewership needed to maintain operations.” Four staff members were laid off.

Community members say the closure of the two papers leaves a large public information hole in a state where a third of the population identifies as Hispanic or Latino. About 20 percent of Nevada residents speak Spanish at home, with the largest chunk of those residents residing in Clark County. 

“We didn't have anything before,” said 73- year-old Luis Bonilla, a radio broadcaster and veteran in Las Vegas’ media scene. “Now we have a lot, but it is disappearing.”

But while the weekly print edition has ended, Escobedo said El Mundo won’t be gone forever. He ended the print version when he did so there would be enough money to breathe new life to El Mundo and bring it into the digital age while still staying true to its local, community roots. 

“We'll tailor it to … meet the needs of the community,” he said. “And those needs are going back to the basics … back to the soccer fields, back to the baseball fields, back to the fútbol fields, back to the bailes [dances], back to Broadacres where people get together.” 

Behind El Mundo’s legacy 

The father and son duo founded the paper in 1981 after starting business ventures including music promotions, a night club, a Spanish-language movie theater and a radio station. 

Back then, Escobedo said the Latino community in Las Vegas was much smaller, about 60,000 to 70,000 people. 

In the early days, Escobedo said his father wrote the majority of the articles while he worked on the layout, distribution and ad sales. A part-time secretary would help out in the evenings. 

“She would do all the typing, and then my dad and I would spend 16 hours putting 12 pages together, cutting, editing photos, the whole nine yards,” Escobedo recalled. 

Escobedo said he and his father went out to sports games every weekend to shoot, shooting photos while his mother, Maria, ran the paper’s social page. The section was beloved by readers and might have kept her even more busy than the father and son duo, earning his mother the nickname, Lla madrina or the godmother. 

The paper also covered politicians and immigration raids from tips they received around the community. 

“My dad’s philosophy was always local, local, local, local,” he said. “So if there was a quinceañera, a wedding, a concert, we’d be out there. If it had to do with sports, we were out there.” 

Escobedo said everything related back to what the community was feeling, working on or worried about. 

“If there’s one thing my dad taught us, it is that if you want to be part of this community, you need to be involved with the community,” he said in a 2019 interview for UNLV’s Latinx Voices of Southern Nevada Oral History Project.  

At its height, the newspaper employed 24 staffers and printed 45,000 copies a week, with three sections totaling more than 100 pages. Even after it got more competition from TV and radio stations, Escobedo said businesses such as local car dealerships still wanted to buy ads in El Mundo because they were more reasonably priced than their competitors. 

“Everybody wanted to advertise,” Escobedo said. 

Roberto Peleáz came to work at El Mundo in 2009 after spending 28 years working as a journalist in his native Cuba. 

He saw the paper evolve beyond its political and community news coverage to include reports focused on culture and education, which he said helped the paper stand out and become essential for anything from researching job opportunities to finding a car mechanic.

“There’s still thousands of people who don’t know how to use a computer or navigate the web or can’t use a smartphone, and they would wait every Friday to read the paper at home or while they are waiting for a doctor's appointment or the bus,” said Peleáz, 63, in Spanish. “A print paper is sorely missing in this city.”  

Selene Lozada, founder of the Parent Leadership Team (PLT), a parent-led, education-focused nonprofit, said Peleáz’s coverage in El Mundo on her and her group’s efforts during the pandemic when they worked to provide families with information after schools shut down helped grow her organization.

“I’m truly grateful to him because … he always wrote about us,” Lozada said in Spanish. “We never had to do anything to get him to publish us. It was very generous of him to always be there for us, writing about us and encouraging us.”

Changing media landscape

The end of El Mundo’s weekly print edition comes as print media outlets nationwide scale back or close altogether. Advertising and subscriptions aren’t bringing in the revenue needed.

Newspaper ad revenue has declined from $50 billion to $10 billion in 20 years, according to 2023 data from the Pew Research Center. It’s the first time that circulation revenue, an estimated $11.6 billion, has been projected to exceed advertising revenue. 

The center also found that daily newspaper circulation nationwide, including print and digital subscriptions, has fallen from about 60 million in the 1990s to about 20.1 million in 2022, according to the center. 

In recent years, 2018, local newspapers such as the Nevada Appeal in Carson City, went from printing six days a week to just two days a week, and The Record-Courier in Gardnerville which went from printing three days a week to just two. The and the Lahontan Valley News in Fallon have cut down on the number of days they print a paperand the Tahoe Daily Tribune are down to just one day a week. Last year, a group of newspapers serving rural Nevada communities such as Ely were sold to a new owner who decided to transition to digital to keep costs down. 

Escobedo said El Mundo’s advertising revenue was particularly hard hit after the pandemic led to the closure of businesses that used to pay ads from the paper, forcing budget cuts. 

Escobedo said he thinks El Mundo was able to hold on for so long, Escobedo said, because newspapers are a strong part of Latin American culture, especially among older Latinos. But it hasn’t been immune to broader trends.

“Younger people, it’s that 15-second clip. If 15 seconds doesn’t grab your attention, you move on,” he said. 

Lourdes Cueva Chacón, a media professor and researcher at San Diego State University, said the technology shift has not only forced traditional media outlets to shift their products to a digital, but to reinvent themselves through social media, newsletters and apps such as WhatsApp that allow them to have a more direct relationship with their readers. 

“When you had your newspaper subscription, it was delivered to your door, but now it's delivered to your social media inbox,” Cueva Chacón said. “They don’t wait for you to get to the newspaper’s website … they go to where their audience gathers on social media.”

El Sol de Nevada is another example of the struggles facing Spanish-language print publications. The Sparks-based paper was founded in 2003, after its founder, Fernando Gutierrez, was laid off from another Nevada news outlet, the Humboldt Sun, after their Spanish-language section shuttered. 

Gutierrez said he felt driven to establish El Sol de Nevada because he felt a real desire from people in the community to keep up to date not just with local events, but going-ons back at home.

“There are so many people asking to learn,” he said. 

At its height, El Sol de Nevada was distributing nearly 10,000 copies, covering local news and politics and even working with a Mexico-based correspondent covering Gutierrez’s home state of Michoacan. But now, with little demand for print journalism and with costs rising, Gutierrez recently made the decision to do away with print editions and go fully digital.

In recent years, many other Spanish media outlets in Northern Nevada have shuttered completely, such as La Unión, El Impacto Deportivo, and another called Eventos. Of the seven Spanish-language newspapers in Northern Nevada, Gutierrez says that El Sol de Nevada is the only he knows of which remains. 

Gutierrez said that with the closure of other outlets, the community’s need for El Sol is greater than ever, but the future looks dim. Gutierrez, 66, has been hospitalized six times in the past year and says that he is struggling to go out and report; his son and a part-time staffer in Mexico are the only other reporters left working. 

“It's a difficult thing because with technology, everyone is now online, on Facebook, and it's a little more difficult than before,” Gutierrez said. “Nevertheless, here we are.”

Rising from the ashes

But those not working in print media are a bit more optimistic.

Rafael Cerros and his co-founder Rogelio Regalado established Fiesta 98.1 FM, a Las Vegas-based radio station, during the pandemic. In the years since, the station has grown to more than 100,000 listeners per month and has been featured on CNN. 

Cerros attributes Fiesta 98.1 FM’s success to its activity in Las Vegas’ Latino community. It goes beyond the role of a traditional radio station, helping organize toy drives and hosting giveaways at local supermarkets, such as La Bonita. The station also maintains an active presence on social media, constantly posting promotions on Facebook and Instagram. 

“We were busting our butts off and we were able to establish a brand, and people started recognizing us,” Cerros said.

Cerros isn’t the only one following a more community-oriented model. Other local radio shows and broadcasting networks, such as Desde Nevada (which was nominated for an Emmy), have focused on local success stories and collaborating with local organizations. 

Escobedo expects the next era of El Mundo, which the family is looking to launch in September, will require a mix of younger staff members who grew up in the digital era and older employees who can carry on the spirit of the newspaper and its local roots. 

He added that the print product won’t completely go away. He envisions printing a handful of special editions throughout the year — and he expects readers and advertisers will follow El Mundo into its next chapter. 

”Technology changes. Everything changes,” he said. “El Mundo Digital … once we staff up and get it going, will be something that we can take care of and again concentrate on the local community.”