Marian Sánchez the president of the Tilingual newspaper La Gran America is a Colombo-American journalist, who came to the United States 2 years ago. She arrived with the idea of learning English and continuing her career. After working in different places and many job applications she had an interview for the chain television station “Univision” in Minneapolis, where she started working as a reporter. She later worked as an editor and journalist for El Heraldo. This newspaper covered the areas of Melrose, Long Praire, Willmar and Sauk Centre, in which it was stationed at. Unfortunately this newspaper shut down because of the high costs of running the paper. Marian however, decided to pursue this difficult task. That is how La Gran America was initiated. Although it was created on such a small budget, Marian has much enthusiasm and dedication. People like the former president of El Heraldo and the president of La Voz Libre of Long Prairie were of great support. Below we will see how this story develops up to the birth of the bilingual news paper La Gran America of Willmar Minnesota.

        Marian studied journalism and social communications at the University of St. Thomas. There she created the first newspaper for her campus. She learned radio, television, press, film, and organizational communication. Marian is 28 years old, she very enterprising and has a very bright spirit. Although she is a very young professional, she has over eight years of experience with the media. That experienced has allowed her take on a great responsibility and create the first bilingual newspaper of Willmar.

        “The shutting down of El Heraldo hit me by surprise, at that time I was working on the case of Alfonso, a young boy with cerebral palsy. He had lost his only means of transportation, a van. The vehicle was crashed three months ago. It was impossible to transport the boy from one place to another. His parents explained the difficulties of transporting him to the doctor. I tried to use radio, but it was very expensive
to pay for the announcements needed to ask for help. This is how with the closing of the newspaper El Heraldo I found the opportunity to ask for help in other cities of Minnesota” Marian said. Alfonso’s parents along with the help of the Willmar community with much effort collected funds to buy another van. However, it was much too costly and more money was needed. Taking the news to other places of Minnesota we found a group of Church Youth members with disabilities from the Church of Incarnation. They were the ones who found a new van for the boy at a very economical cost. It was like this that the first news was born, as well as La Gran America Marian stated.

        “Many people of the community shared with me the importance of continuing with a mean of communication. However, I knew that the costs of initiating a newspaper were big. My experience with other newspapers told me that this was not going to be an easy task. We have to have a lot of patience and optimism. I am very thankful for the support and team of volunteers that work on the newspaper. I am thankful for their dedication and the affection from those who have supported me and backed me up in this process.

        I am very pleased with the commentaries that our readers have sent to us. So far people have called and wrote to us from Willmar, St. Cloud, Alexandria, Minneapolis, and Florida. I don’t know how the newspaper arrived to all those places, but we are so pleased to hear good comments from our readers. “These responses give me encouragement to improve and continue with this work, which is my field of study. I thank God, my family, and you the reader who is the motivation for which I continue to work hard and provide news, events, and public information on various issues that affect us, from our communities to your home. Together we can achieve one of the best networks of multicultural communication in Minnesota that includes the Latino, English, and Somali, communities. We hope that later many more join as well. Because we all need to know what happens in our city. Thank you,” said Marian.

        Just like this Young learner, we hope that many others bring new ideas for making a more unified city. A city where community and cultural values are strengthened. We wish her success with the newspaper.