New California Media Expo & Awards 2002 – ‘Who’s Who’ Of Multi-Ethnic Media.

America’s most diverse media network — announced today that it will host the NCM EXPO & Awards 2002 on the evening of September 17 and all day September 18 at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. The event, with an estimated 2,000 EXPO attendees and exhibitors, will showcase the news organizations that serve immigrant and traditional minority populations across the United States, from Al-Jazeerah TV to the Sing Tao Daily, La Opinion and Black Planet.com. The Awards Reception and Banquet takes place from 6 p.m. – 10 p.m. on September 17 and the EXPO runs from 9 a.m.- 6 p.m. on September 18.

“For multi-cultural marketers looking to identify the most effective vehicles to reach America’s growth markets, this is a must-attend event,” says NCM executive director Sandy Close. As documented by NCM’s first-ever multi-lingual poll of ethnic California by Bendixen & Associates, these media reach 84 percent of Hispanics, African Americans and Asian Americans in California alone. And California is the epicenter of a nationwide ethnic media boom, “the most significant new force in American journalism since the emergence of alternative media in the 1960s,” according to Steve Montiel, Director of the Institute for Justice and Journalism, USC Annenberg School for Communication.
For six years these media outlets have been building a remarkable editorial and marketing exchange through New California Media that now is spreading across the country. The NCM EXPO brings them together with advertisers, ad agency and PR executives, civic and elected officials, mainstream media leaders, and foundation and nonprofit directors, for a day of workshops, exhibits, general sessions and professional development meetings.

“The EXPO is more than a business opportunity,” Close says. “A year after the 9/11 tragedy, Americans know that our ability to communicate with one another hinges on expanding our access to multiple news lenses and multi-lingual media vehicles.”

“To be effective, advertisers have to go beyond the traditional model,” says Liam McGee, President of Bank of America California, a title sponsor of the NCM EXPO & Awards 2002. “And frankly, advertising in the ethnic media is highly cost-effective.”

The NCM Awards Banquet will celebrate winners of the only multi-lingual media awards contest in the country. EXPO workshops will focus on marketing and editorial topics such as “Pitching Consumers and Courting Voters — How to Leverage the Power of the Ethnic Media”; “Ethnic Media Covers the Post 9/11 Story — A Year of Living Dangerously”; and “So What Do We Call Ourselves Now?”, a discussion by ethnic media representatives and marketers who argue that terms such as “minority,” “emerging,” “multicultural” and even “ethnic” no longer reflect the new demographic realities. NCM will poll EXPO participants on their favorite terms and announce the winners at the conclusion of the EXPO.

New California Media is an association of more than 400 print, broadcast, and online ethnic media organizations founded in 1996 by the non-profit Pacific News Service. NCM’s goal is to raise the visibility of ethnic media; increase the ethnic media’s access to the advertising dollar; and promote an AP-style inter-ethnic editorial exchange. Major funders include the American Association of Advertising Agencies, the Ford Foundation, the James Irvine Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Walter and Evelyn Haas Jr. Foundation, the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the San Francisco Foundation. For more information, visit the website at www.ncmonline.com or contact the NCM office at 415/438-4755 in San Francisco, or 213/743-5294 in Los Angeles.