El Observador celebrates its 100th issue

SALT LAKE CITY — Talk about good timing.

El Observador, the Spanish-language newspaper and sister publication of the Deseret News that launched Feb. 9, celebrates its 100th issue today.

Just in time to give salient coverage to immigration reform as the hot-button issue is boiling over and becomes increasingly polarizing.

A few months before the 2010 World Cup kicked off, enabling coverage of Hispanic teams and their passionate fans.

Led by editor Patricia Dark, the three-times-a-week El Observador (Spanish for "The Observer") wasted no time gaining a foothold in the marketplace.

"El Observador has quickly become the leading Spanish publication in Utah," Deseret News CEO Clark Gilbert said. "Not only do we reach more homes and more Spanish-speakers than any other publication in the state, our readers have responded to our strong visual format and the depth of our original stories."

When El Observador was still just an idea in the development stage, it faced numerous obstacles to ever going from drawing board to printing press — not the least of which is conventional wisdom suggesting that the ongoing biggest downturn in the history of newspapers isn't an optimal time to launch a newspaper.

But, fortunately for Observador, from Day 1 the now-nascent publication had the right benefactor in the form of Mark Willes, the Deseret Management Corp. CEO who first hatched the idea that eventually became El Observador.

"When I was first given this assignment (at DMC) 18 months ago, I noticed that the Hispanic population in Utah was the fastest-growing group in the state," Willes said. "It just seemed to me like a segment that we needed to serve more effectively than we did.

"I started talking with people and I found a lot of others in the organization who felt the same way, and eventually took it to our board. They agreed, and off we went."

Willes' vision for El Observador stemmed in large part from his overlapping tenures as publisher of the Los Angeles Times (1997-2000) and CEO of the paper's parent company, Times Mirror (1995-2000). In that epoch, Times Mirror owned a 50-percent share in La Opinión, the largest Spanish-language newspaper in the L.A. market.