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September’s closure of the KION and Telemundo local news departments has impacts beyond the Central Coast region, according to former KION senior managing editor, morning anchor and producer Victor Guzman.
“It’s a huge void that is being left behind,” he said. “I think a lot of us recognize that. As we kept talking about it more and more we realized how shitty all this was.”
KION’s shutdown, which included the Spanish language station Telemundo 23, on Sept. 23 impacted about 16 people and is yet another example of local news ecosystems shrinking, Guzman said.
Sandy Santos, former producer and anchor for Telemundo who was with the company for more than three years, said in the weeks following the shutdown that she already sees a reduction in information in the community, including the Spanish language viewership.
She said the other Spanish news station, Univision, wasn’t locally produced.
“We’ve had shootings, we’ve had stabbings, we’ve had things going on with the government shutdown and those are not being covered locally,” she said. “How is that going to impact the community and nobody really knows.”
In addition to losing local news content, Guzman said the community is losing a different perspective on stories and a training ground for local journalists.
He said without KION and Telemundo the community is left with KSBW and Univision for TV news, and won’t have the ability to compare and contrast how each station covers a story.
“Losing that perspective sucks,” he said.
Guzman, who had been with KION for more than seven years, said he was at home about 11 a.m. getting ready to go on a walk after finishing up his overnight shift when he got a call notifying employees the department would be shut down.
He said after they were notified, there was a 30-second silence, thinking it was a joke.
“I was waiting, listening for the punchline and I never got it,” Guzman said.
KION, which covered Monterey, Santa Cruz and San Benito counties, is owned by the News Press Gazette, which announced it was replacing the local newscast with KPIX News that evening to “deliver the most significant stories from across Northern and Central California, while continuing to highlight local reporting, weather forecasts and community updates that matter most to residents of Monterey, Salinas, Santa Cruz and beyond.”
The News Press Gazette did not respond to a request for comment.
Santos said that though the new content is branded as local, it is “recycled” and “doesn’t necessarily reflect anything that’s local.”
“People are in the dark at this moment in Spanish [language] news,” she said.
Santos said her work focused on minority groups, including Mixtecs and Zapotecs, which are Indigenous communities from South Mexico, in south Monterey County. She highlighted stories which were not covered by other outlets.
“We went deep into other communities as well that didn’t even speak Spanish,” she said, adding some residents only speak Indigenous languages.
Guzman said the loss of the two local news departments reaches beyond the region because the news reached other markets.
He added that the Central Coast market was a training ground and feeder source for journalists to move on to bigger markets such as the Bay Area and Los Angeles.
Guzman said the takeaway is to support local news.
“When you lose those training grounds for journalists it can be a downward spiral.”
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