Syracuse’s newest television show may be Spanish-language news.

With the start of a new semester, Syracuse University’s CitrusTV staff will vote on whether ‘Las Noticias en Español’ should become a regular part of campus programming. The producers of the Spanish-language news show turned in a pilot show in the final weeks of the fall 2007 semester.

Jaime Sasso, the station’s news director, is a member of the executive staff and will take part in the vote.

‘I think that if there is an interest for it in Syracuse and more specifically on our campus, then we should do what we can to get this show on the air,’ the sophomore television, radio and film major said.

The 10-minute, entirely-in-Spanish show was taped and submitted by its noon deadline on Dec. 5, along with a seven-page transcript translated into English, said founder and executive producer, Jason Tarr.

Student-run CitrusTV releases its content directly online to SU students and the broader community. If the show is approved, it will be the first Spanish-language program for the Syracuse community.

The CitrusTV executive staff will vote on the show within the first few weeks of the current spring semester, Sasso said. The show’s pilot deadline was originally scheduled for the end of the university’s fall semester, which left no time for a review and the show’s status pending.

‘Basically, everything is on hold,’ Sasso said.

The break is a change for Tarr, a junior broadcast journalism, Spanish language, literature and culture and international relations major at SU.

Two years of working on the project has been compacted into the 10-minute pilot, Tarr said.

Much of those two years were spent not promoting his idea, but finding it. He went to the community to find out what Syracuse needed, and he decided it was a Spanish-language broadcast news show, he said.

‘It seems unfortunate to me that at one of the best broadcast journalism schools in the country, there is no Spanish journalism program when Spanish television is clearly one of the fastest growing markets in the U.S.,’ Tarr said.

Increased immigration and language diversity and the resulting Spanish-language media rise are trends Tarr has experienced first-hand. At his California high school, Tarr spoke Spanish with the Hispanic students. He would watch both the English news and ‘La Univision,’ a Spanish-language news show.

For his own Spanish-language show, the pilot anchors are fluent in Spanish and come from

‘all over the place,’ Tarr said.

Hispanic groups on campus are also in support of ‘Las Noticias en Espanol.’ SU organization La L.U.C.H.A., Latino Undergraduates Creating History in America, has helped promote the show, along with the Syracuse chapter of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, Tarr said.

Members in the broader Syracuse area are also encouraging Tarr’s mission. The first general interest meeting had a larger-than-expected turnout of not only students and faculty, but also of members from the community, Tarr said.

The number of Spanish-language papers has tripled within the last 30 years, said Johanna Keller, professor of newspaper and communications in S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.

‘The trends are clear,’ she said.

Sophomore Michelle San Miguel is proud to be Cuban, but the fact that she speaks Spanish often confuses people because her fair complexion is not typical of Hispanics, she said. San Miguel was co-anchor for the final pilot.

If the show is picked up, it will give San Miguel, a broadcast journalism and international relations major, a chance to share the diversity within the Spanish-speaking community.

‘It’s important for me to know that there’s no uniform look for Hispanics,’ San Miguel said.

Sasso has also noticed the support behind Tarr’s proposed show.

‘There are definitely people who are working hard and doing their best for the show,’ she said.

Published on January 22, 2008 at 12:00 pm