New California Media, partnering with The Center for American Progress and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund have just released a poll that they claim shows that nearly half the country’s Hispanics, Asian Americans and other minorities prefer ethnic newspapers, television and radio to mainstream media. The poll is titled, The Ethnic Media in America: The Giant Hidden in Plain Sight. Several news organizations including Yahoo report:

Overall, ethnic media reach approximately 80 percent the groups studied — about 51 million people, or a quarter of the U.S. adult population.

“This is something that is growing like a giant hidden in plain sight,” said Sandy Close, executive director for NCM, a nationwide association of more than 700 ethnic media groups.

Many turn to foreign language newspapers and broadcasts because English isn’t their native language. Additionally, minority media often do a better job covering news from the homeland and other issues the community cares about.

“We have a multicultural society with multimedia choices, so people pay attention to media that pay attention to them. That’s the bottom line,” said Felix Gutierrez, professor of journalism at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California.

I am a little offended that the poll apparently did not consider ethnic blogs. Although I am obviously biased, it would seem to me that once blogs penetrate the consumer’s mind as an alternate source for news, the overall numbers in this poll will trend higher. Some additional highlights:

-The national reach of ethnic media was calculated by including all adults that watch ethnic television, listen to ethnic radio OR read ethnic newspapers on a regular basis.

-This group includes the 29 million “primary consumers of ethnic media” and another 22 million “secondary consumers of ethnic media” that prefer mainstream media but access ethnic media on a regular basis.

-The reach of Asian Indian, Filipino and Japanese newspapers is smaller but still impressive – more than half of the adults in these groups read an ethnic newspaper a few times a month or more.

-Access to the Internet is very high (67 percent) among all Asian Americans and half of them prefer ethnic websites to mainstream websites. Asian Indian adults access the Internet more often than other Asians.

Even though this blog will benefit by this trend, overall I think this to be a disturbing (but perhaps inevitable) development. Because major media outlets have no financial or political incentive to give detailed and nuanced coverage of broad sets of issues that are relevant to many populations, we see more news organizations catering to specific, often fractured communities. News organizations will increasingly tailor their message to a specific population (whether a minority population or that of a specific political ideology) in order to maintain viewers. Thus, overall bias will grow and “news” as we’ve known it will be dead.

Guttierez said the poll was further evidence that the news media are fracturing into segments, a trend fueled in part by advertisers looking to tailor their messages to individual consumers.

Some companies see minorities — many of whom are immigrants whose tastes and buying habits are still being shaped — as an untapped market.

Advertising and marketing in mainstream media, about $140 billion a year, is growing about 3 percent annually, according to NCM estimates. In Asian American media, marketing dollars hover around $100 million a year, but are expanding about 10 percent. For Hispanic outlets, ad spending is about $3 billion and increasing at a staggering 15 percent.

“They’re ripe for the picking,” Gutierrez said of minority groups. “Individually they may not have much buying power, but collectively they do.”