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- [00:00]
Maria Hinojosa
So when I was a little girl, I used to watch the evening news every single night with my family.
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Unknown
They called it the march on Washington for jobs and freedom.
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Maria Hinojosa
We would all be getting ready to have dinner. It was six of us on the south side of Chicago. Mom was always making a meal for us. And I loved watching the news, the television news.
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Unknown
The message to the country is, free yourself by freeing us.
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Maria Hinojosa
So much was happening.
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Unknown
Man finally has visited the moon after all the ages of wishing and waiting.
- [00:34]
Maria Hinojosa
And we watched all the time. But the thing is, is that I never saw anyone who looked like me or my family. I never saw people like us in all of the television news that I was consuming. And of course, that made me think, like, how many other people are out there whose stories aren't being told right? I kind of planted a seed in my head. So fast forward from that to getting to New York, going to Barnard College, and becoming a part of the college radio station, creating my own show called Nueva Cancion y de mas esta cancion.
- [01:13]
Unknown
Del pueblo Pretende hace rum recorrido a trave.
- [01:21]
Maria Hinojosa
We would play Silvio Rodriguez, Pablo Milanese, all the protest music from Latin America. We talked Latin American politics. And I was a kid behind a microphone right here in New York City, and I was reaching into people's homes with my voice on the radio. And it always made me think, like, am I reaching a little kid just like me? Like, is that little kid gonna hear me on the radio and say, wow, she sounds like me? She's telling stories about people that I know. So I did stick with this notion of becoming a journalist. And I got to some pretty incredible networks. I worked with npr. I worked with cbs. I worked with cnn, wnyc, wnbc. And when I was in those newsrooms, I got a chance to see what they operated like. But I also got a chance to think about what kind of newsroom that I would have if I had my own newsroom. And I wanted to have a newsroom where it was like the journalism was 100% researched, fact checked. But I wanted to create storytelling and journalism that touched people's hearts. Hearts, Right. I wanted to make people feel something. Now, when I reported at many of these networks, I was very clear about the fact that part of my responsibility was to bring these stories into the newsroom. And what was interesting was that even though I was bringing this kind of new perspective, remember, I was the first Latina in these newsrooms. Oftentimes what it felt like was fellow journalists saying, oh, you're coming into Our newsroom. And you have a bias because you care about these stories. And I was like, no, I'm just telling you these stories because these are communities that I know, and you're seeing this as a bias. Okay, I pushed ahead, and the show Latino usa, which was founded by the founding executive producer, Maria Martin, she tapped me to become the founding anchor of Latino usa. Wow, what a moment. This is Latino usa, the radio journal of news and culture. Well, you fast forward from there to the year 2010, and that's the year when I decided to create Futuro Media. I wanted to get Futuro Media to be a place where a show like Latino USA could be housed and grow, make this into a newsroom for other journalists of conscience like me. I wanted to create a newsroom with journalism that had a heart, that wasn't afraid to show emotion or actually care for the people that we were covering. It was a journalism with radical transparency, a journalism of conscience, a journalism that was transparent about who we are, where we come from, and that really stood in the face of this kind of faux objectivity of a lot of traditional newsrooms. It was a journalism where we understood our role in the question of power in the United States of America. So here we are 15 years later. Oh, my God. The vision of Futuro has absolutely grown. You know, Latino USA has been on the year for more than 30 years, and it has launched the careers of so many amazing journalists and storytellers. And then Futuro Media, we created Futuro Studios. Right. To grow, we wanted to create a space for beautiful podcast series and audio documentaries unlike anything else out there. So we created Anything for Selena. I saw a completely new way of being. I discovered Selena. We created the history of reggaeton. Oh, my God. La Brega.
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Unknown
But that's the Brega in Puerto Rico.
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That's la.
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That's La Brega. That's La Brega in Puerto Rico.
- [05:56]
Maria Hinojosa
There's no perfect English translation for this word that Puerto Ricans use all the time. We love you, Puerto Rico. And of course, the podcast Suave, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2022.
- [06:09]
Unknown
For our audience, it's important for them to know that you are one of two Latinas in history to win a Pulitzer, and you did it out of an organization that you founded. So, so much kudos to you.
- [06:20]
Maria Hinojosa
So what's the point, Maria? Well, today we are taking a really big step, and we're launching a membership and subscription program. It's a huge step, and we're calling it Futuro Plus. It's full of exclusive episodes, lots of events, and other amazing stuff that we're going to talk about in a second. But first, here's the reason why we're doing it. I have said often that running an independent journalism nonprofit is not for the faint of heart. This is not easy. And in a lot of ways, it's becoming more difficult now than ever. For one, after a mega podcast boom during the pandemic that we all live through, I mean, right now, the podcast industry has been in recession, right? It's shrinking. The big companies that poured money into the industry have dramatically been cutting back their podcast budgets. That means less shows are getting greenlit, and the ones that are getting greenlit have much smaller budgets. And also, there's more competition than ever for the nonprofit dollars that are out there now. We are incredibly grateful to have the supports of some pretty powerful and wonderful foundations and really fabulous individuals, but we have to prepare for the future. You know, funding priorities can change. And so with all of the federal funding that's getting pulled from all across the country, there's more pressure now on those funders to fill those gaps. So we're feeling it. And because of the rules of public media, actually Puturo cannot run our own pledge drives on the radio, right? Only the public radio stations themselves can do that. I don't know if you knew this, but Futuro does not get one single dollar, not one penny, from the corporation for public Broadcasting or any other federal sources or public sources. But it is something that we are proud of because it means that we are truly independent when it comes to reporting on the government. Now, on the other side of things, you know, what we do at Futuro Media, it's not cheap, right? And with all due respect to people who do chatcasts, you know, we don't generally just put two people and sit them in front of a mic and just have them have at it, right? Our weekly deeply reported journalism and immersive podcast series cost money to make. And we have to pay our producers, our story editors, our sound designers, our audio engineers. Now, it is important for you to know that we use independent fact checkers for every series because we want to guarantee that you are getting factual, accurate information, right? And of course, we also have all the normal business expenses required to operate, legal, accounting, it, rent. I like to say that we are lean and mean. Of course, the vast majority of our budget goes to creating the stories themselves, but there's no way around it. Making great journalism costs money. So we are launching our subscription service because we want to be able to continue bringing you the kinds of podcasts that you aren't getting anywhere else. There is no other futuro media and we think that actually being funded by our listeners is really healthy for an organization like ours. It means that we're accountable to our listeners, not to the government, not to corporations. Okay, so what will Futuro plus look like? Oh, my God, it's gonna be great. Basically, you're gonna sign up on our website and you're gonna get access to members only subscription feeds for all of our shows. I kind of think of it as like onlyfans, but we keep our clothes on and everybody's skin is in the game. Get it? Okay. Now, on those feeds, first of all, you're going to get completely ad free listening. Yes. And there will be extended interviews and special exclusive episodes filled with juicy behind the scenes chisme and how we make this all happen. Also, we're going to send members only newsletters with notes from the field, great recommendations, there's going to be special subscriber only playlists and virtual events, and that's where you'll get to find me and other futuro journalists joining you in conversation and. All right, this is really cool because whenever we launch a new show, members are going to be able to listen to the whole season right away. So while everybody else has to wait every week for a new episode to drop, you're going to be able to listen to it all in one sitting, as some of us are known to do. And we are launching our subscription service with the Suave Podcast Season two, which is available for members right now in its entirety.
- [11:38]
Unknown
Right now, at this moment in this life, I am not happy. I'm glad I'm home. But if you say describe happy, I should be able to describe happy. And I can't. I. I can't. I won't even know how to start to describe happy.
- [11:54]
Maria Hinojosa
Adios.
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Unknown
Even with a Pulitzer. Even with. I can't describe it because I'm not. I'm just surviving like I was in prison.
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Who.
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Maria Hinojosa
Suave Podcast season two is a roller coaster. It's deeply reported journalism and you get to be right there on the front lines of this story. It's really amazing. And we're gonna be releasing more new podcasts later this year, and we're bringing back new seasons of shows that you love. We have an ambitious and pretty exciting slate of new shows we're gonna be releasing totally on our own. For all those shows, Futuro plus members will get to Hear them first. Okay. Yeah, there are a lot of perks, and we're working really hard on that. But, you know, there are other reasons to subscribe. The real reason to support FUTURO is because of what we stand for as journalism of conscience. Now, I know I'm going to call you out a little bit. I bet you have a subscription to Netflix or to Max or to Hulu. And yeah, they do offer hundreds of movies and TV shows to watch. But how about if you think about taking just a little bit of that money that you give every month to those mega corporations and instead support a small organization, a nonprofit that is fighting literally every day to bring you stories that you love. Stories that like, oh, my God, they touch your heart, they make you cry, they make you learn about the world and your community and. And you know that. Futuro Media is a nonprofit that was founded and is run predominantly by women of color. And it centers the lives of Latinos, Latinas, immigrants, black and indigenous people, queer people, Muslim people, trans people. You know, we see ourselves as practicing excellence in journalism because our newsroom reflects our country. And you know what? If you sign up for this membership program, you're going to be joining a community of people who care about news and storytelling the same way that you do. We believe the most interesting work in podcasting and the most rigorous journalism is still happening in public media. We want to keep investing our time and energy into building the future of that work with you. We want FUTURO to be around for another 15 years and another 15 years after that. It's an invitation for you to take on a bigger role in our future, in our futuro. Today, our country's leaders are trying to silence journalism that's inconvenient to them. They're suing newspapers, threatening to go after the non profit status of many organizations. But you know what? We're not going to be silenced. We are invested in creating journalism long term that is accountable to you, to our listeners. That's why we maintain relationship with sources for decades. Like in terms of suave, it's why we don't just parachute in some place and then leave. We go back again and again, and we keep following the story, whether it's the ICE raids in Mississippi or our series, which is looking at how the border is moving. We believe in telling the truth, in telling it like it is and telling it to you directly. Now, the thing we need right now most is each other, is community. And as the news media around us crumbles, there aren't a lot of organizations like us to take up the mantle. If Futuro falls, there probably won't be another one to take its place. Place. So this is the ask. We want you to join us. To join us in Nuestra Comunidad, to be a part of this all. So Visit our website, futuromediagroup.org join + that's my invitation. Become a futurista and let's see what we can grow together. Because Yatusam is.