Spring Break
The Daily OrangeSpanish-language news program awaits vote
By Mallory Passuite
Posted: 1/22/08, 10:47 PM EST Section: News
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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.
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