by Marvin J Ramirez
Marvin J. Ramirez
Dear readers, each year the story continues, and most of the time, without much time in front of me, I just add one more year to my anniversary editorials.
It was 18 years ago, when San Francisco and the Bay Area communities saw the first edition of The Reporter, as it was called then (see the image here).
It was all in English, and at that time it had not occurred to me yet, to produce a bilingual publication. However, because my journalist father didn’t speak English, he suggested that I should make it bilingual. Without telling me why, I kind of thought what was his reason: he wanted his elderly friends at Centro Latino – where he ate lunch and socialized everyday – and himself, be able to read his son’s journalistic work. He was very proud of me.
Prior to that, when I went to pick up the first edition at the printer – on 16th Street, and was driving on route to SF State University to distribute the paper there, I stopped at the intersection of Mission and 26th streets’ traffic light. I saw a group of old friends standing at the door of Barnes Gómez’ Golden Gate Liquors.
There was Gómez and a few of his personal friends chatting, telling and hearing each other stories, as it was his personality. At that moment it occurred to me to give them a copy of the paper. I got out of the car and brought them a bundle of The Reporter, which, after doing so, I thought of it as a community newspaper. My first idea was to make it a campus paper.
The first edition, as you can see in the graphic, was poorly laid out. I was barely learning my first steps in newspaper design. I was almost two years short from graduating with my Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism.
I saw a new horizon in my life. I gave my entire life to my new project, to chronicle much of the life of the Latino community within my limitations, of course.
I want to thank every one of my advertisers for still being with us for these long years. Some have been faithfully supporting this endeavor, this labor of love serving you all.
Every year we ask you all our readers and merchants to join us to celebrate our anniversary by placing your business card and an ad of your business to congratulate this effort and to help us better our labor and the quality of the publication.
And we ask you again to help us bring in the funds we need to continue serving you.
During the next weeks we will be knocking at your business door, promoting our 18th Anniversary editions. We hope you will open it to us. A big hug to all of you, with love.
