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It’s early Friday morning, and Siyad Salah drives his taxi around Cedar-Riverside in Minneapolis-St. Paul. He looks out the windshield, examining the neighborhood even though he’s been in the area many times. When he asks questions, he can be mistaken for an undercover cop rather than a taxi driver. He has a camera and tripod in the cab’s compartment. His pen and notebook are by his side.

Salah likes to talk to people he meets. From time to time, he stops by a gas station or a local grocery story, and then chats with some immigrant workers there. In a state where more than 8 percent of residents are foreign-born, Siyad knows that any interesting story about or for his community — whether it may come from a passenger or something that he’d find while driving — could unfold anytime.

I have known Salah for more than a decade. I first met him when I was with New America Media, and we organized a press event on immigration in the Twin Cities. Siyad works as a taxi driver by dawn and a journalist by noon. A refugee from Somalia, he once told me that he does journalism for the Somali and other African communities in Minnesota, and he drives a cab to earn a living for his family.

“When my family first came to America, there was no television show in Somali. We didn’t understand what was happening around us. My mother felt so lonely and isolated,” he said. “That was how I got motivated to be involved in producing a show called ‘Somali TV’ in our native language.”

Today, as immigration and race continue to be a profoundly complicated issue in Minnesota and U.S. politics in general, more Somali and other African media outlets have remained robust across the state — both to inform both newcomers and those immigrants and refugees who have already settled into a larger American society and to reduce stigma by magnifying the community’s positive contributions.

The Minneapolis-St. Paul region has the largest Somali population in the United States. Many of them first came as students or businesspeople, and in recent decades as refugees as a result of the Somali Civil War. To date, the Twin Cities have had a number of Somali programs and news outlets — including Somali TV, the state’s first Somali television program to air on Minneapolis Television Network (MTN) and other online platforms, Somali American, Somali Link Radio on KFAI, KALY Somali American Radio and Tusmo Times. The area also has a diverse African media, such as The Africa Paper, Mshale (Kenyan) and Zehabesha (Ethiopian).

“The [African] news outlets greatly help our communities integrate into the American life,” said Abdulkadir Osman, a Somali American community leader. “At the same time, they connect us all to our relatives and loved ones we left behind in our home countries.”

Osman, who founded Somali TV and brought it to MTN with Salah in 1997, says these African news media have played an important role in keeping his community civically engaged. They’ve helped to produce American politicians, writers, and activists, including Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, Nuruddin Farah, and Abdi Warsame.

Minnesota’s other immigrant enclaves

In the late 19th century, European immigrants — mostly those from Scandinavia, Germany, Ireland, and Italy — came to Minnesota and made it their home. Then, in the early 20th century, the next wave of immigrants were Poles and Mexicans. From the late 20th century till present, immigrants from Southeast Asia, East Africa, and Central America have settled across the state. The immigrant community has ultimately made Minnesota one of the most diverse states in the U.S., in terms of race, ethnicity, religion, age and educational attainment.

With the recent increase of the Asian immigrant population, Minneapolis-St. Paul has established strong and reliable Asian media. There’s one Chinese-language news outlet, China Tribune, in the Twin Cities. Still, the Hmong-American community is the most dominant market. Two of these prominent community outlets — Hmong Today and Hmong Times — are weekly publications. However, it’s Hmong radio stations have the largest audience-base in the Hmong community.

Wameng Moua, editor and publisher of Hmong Today, told me that most of the U.S.-born or raised Hmong Americans tend to read the online English edition or on social media, while the first-generation and Hmong immigrants prefer to get their information from radio stations.

“Most younger Hmong Americans interact and get their information on Facebook. So, it is a must to have a social media account for the paper — and it is less expensive to run,” he said.

Martha Vickery, publisher of the English-language The Korean Quarterly, said that the Asian population has greatly increased in the Twin Cities. “We are seeing more and more Southeast Asian immigrants — Thai, Cambodians, Filipinos and Vietnamese — immigrating to the area,” she said. “They could surpass the Hmong population in the coming years.”

Most recently, the Sahan Journal launched in August 2019 with coverage for and about Minnesota’s immigrant communities, led by Somali-American journalist Mukhtar Ibrahim. “We want to show how these communities are transforming, what they’re going through, and be a professional news website that produces high-quality, highly edited stories,” said Ibrahim.

That means community-based and led media will be all the more important in the Twin Cities and across the state, as this niche market continues to inform and engage different immigrant populations, connecting them to their home countries while creating new ties in their current one.

Oni Advincula was a former editor and national media director for New America Media and a correspondent for The Jersey Journal. Currently, he works as a media consultant and and a freelance journalist. He is the co-author of “The State of Ethnic and Community Media in New Jersey” and has worked with ethnic media in 45 states for more than 20 years.

Last June, Mayor Edward Terry walked into the Clarkston Community Center’s meeting hall for a panel discussion on the upcoming census. The hall was packed with community leaders, legislators, refugees, and immigrants. For a small city located east of Atlanta, Clarkston has become the most ethnically diverse square mile in the United States.

“I am truly honored to welcome you to our city, known as the Ellis Island of the South,” Terry said. “The ethnic media in this room plays a very important role to inform our residents who come from every corner of the world.”

Since the mid-70s, Clarkston has welcomed Somalis fleeing civil war, Bhutanese fleeing ethnic cleansing, as well as Cambodians, Nepalis, Croatians, Eritreans, and Liberians escaping violence and religious persecution in their home countries. Now, as Clarkston continues to attract refugees and immigrants from Asian, Central American, and African nations, the city — and metro Atlanta as a whole — has become one of the major hubs of ethnic media in the country.

“Every day, we have programs that are aired in at least 10 languages. And the hosts, mostly volunteers, also have first-hand knowledge of the cultural nuances of their own communities,” said Hussein Mohammad, a founding member and former director of Sagal Radio, a small Clarkston-based radio station that broadcasts in Swahili, Sino-Tibetan, Tigrinya, and Arabic, to name a few.

Recently arrived immigrants from South Korea have also made metro Atlanta their home.

“You go to Duluth [which is part of Gwinnett County, about 27 miles from Atlanta city center], you would think you are not in the Deep South. With rows and rows of Korean establishments, and hundreds of thousands of Koreans who live there, it feels more like Seoul,” said Jong Won Lee, former editor of Korea Daily. “If you speak English, you’d be the minority.”

Notably, metro Atlanta has a huge Korean ethnic media market, perhaps on par with those in Los Angeles and New York. In Gwinnett County alone, the Korean population increased by 155 percent from 2000 to 2017. These numbers don’t take account undocumented Korean immigrants, who tend to be undercounted. When I spoke with Eugene Rhee, Program Director of the Center for Pan Asian Community Services, several years ago, he underscored that the community has a different count of Korean population. By their estimates, there has been a 1,000 percent increase in the Korean population in Duluth — or Gwinnett County — over the last 15 years.

The Atlanta area now has four major Korean news outlets — three dailies (Korea Daily, Korea Times, and Chosen Daily) and a television station WKTB-CD, which is owned by Korean American TV Broadcasting.

The Chinese immigrant population has also been growing quickly, and so are Chinese-language publications. Less than a decade ago, The World Journal was the only Chinese-language publication in the area. Now, there are three other Chinese newspapers within the city limits, namely Atlanta Chinese News, China Tribune, Duowei Times, and The Epoch Times — the Chinese-American media network that covers 21 languages and 33 countries.

“More and more Chinese people are moving into Atlanta and buying properties. They think that Atlanta has more affordable real estate properties, better weather and friendlier people,” said Lily Lee, former publisher and editor of The World Journal Atlanta. “Soon, we will have our own Chinatown here.”

And according to the Pew Research Center, Atlanta ranks 19th among the sixty largest metro areas in the country for total Hispanic population. Nearly 600,000 Hispanics reside in the area; they represent about 11 percent of metro residents, and over half of the almost million Hispanics in Georgia overall.

Mundo Hispanico, the largest Spanish-language weekly in Georgia — and across the Southern states — has expanded its distribution and operation to North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, and Florida. Formerly owned by Cox Communications, Mundo Hispanico has been shifting to digital, according to its editors.

The other Spanish-language publication, El Nuevo Georgia, has also been thriving, along with television stations Telemundo Atlanta and Univision 34.

Given the long history of African Americans in the South, the oldest media outlets in Atlanta are black newspapers. The Atlanta Daily World was founded in 1928 and The Atlanta Voice in 1956. Both played a significant role during the start of the Civil Rights Movement in the Deep South and continue to serve thousands of readers in the city today.

Despite some punitive, anti-immigration laws in Georgia, Teddy Dagwe, publisher of Dinq Magazine, a monthly that serves both the Christian and Muslim Ethiopian communities in metro Atlanta, says that immigrant communities continue to thrive in the area.

“We have each other here in big numbers. And it makes a difference when you have someone like Mayor Terry who understands us, who lives with us, and who listens to us,” Dagwe said.

Many see Clarkston and the greater Atlanta area as a bright spot in the national landscape — a place that has continued to welcome immigrants and refugees, where ethnic media and civic leaders are actively engaging with these communities to respond to their news and information needs.

Oni Advincula was a former editor and national media director for New America Media and a correspondent for The Jersey Journal. Currently, he works as a media consultant and and a freelance journalist. He is the co-author of “The State of Ethnic and Community Media in New Jersey” and has worked with ethnic media in 45 states for more than 20 years.