We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Fernando Soto. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Fernando below.

Fernando, appreciate you joining us today. So, naming is such a challenge. How did you come up with the name of your brand?

I came up with the name New Digital Press because I thought that local news is still catching up to the digital era. My audience are primarily Spanish-speakers who are new immigrants in South Carolina. I had to come up with a “DBA” or Doing Business As — and decided to name it Nuestro Estado, which translates to Our State. As an immigrant myself, and one that grew up in South Carolina — I wanted people to feel pride in our new home. It was important that they had a reminder every time they said or thought about Nuestro Estado, that in fact South Carolina also belonged to them. For the past 20 years the immigrant population has been growing rapidly and truth is we contribute so much to South Carolina, so having our name reflect a sense of ownership in each of our audience members has been at the core of who we are as a business.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I got into the industry shortly after college in 2016. My first experience was in corporate media, working for a local big network affiliate in Mobile, Ala. That was one of the best and worst experiences I’ve ever had in a job. I learned a lot about the journalism industry and specifically how corporations were controlling messaging at local levels. That did not sit well with me — it was not the reason why I wanted to go into journalism. It was a hostile work environment being a gay immigrant man and as you can imagine the place was not very diverse to begin with. So after trying to make it work for about $9.65 an hour, I decided to leave. Unsure if I hated the career path I chose or if it was that particular place. In 2017, I came back to South Carolina and was consulting for a small local Spanish-language paper that wanted my help to bring them to the digital era. I did that for about a year and a half and realized that was not how I wanted my involvement in the industry to be and there was a huge information gap still for folks who did not speak English.
I didn’t want to reinvent the wheel so I knocked on some doors to see if they took me up on my ambition and energy to provide more than translated press releases — to my surprise the existing publications said no. The only option left was to do it myself.
I should note I had a full-time job in the construction industry at the time. In 2019 I started a site just for resources, thinking it would be my hobby to fill the gap left behind by the other publications. It began to pick up steam fast and by the end of that year I was rebranding it from Recursos Estatales (state resources) to Nuestro Estado and filing the necessary paperwork to launch it as a business. I got my first sponsorship client during the transition and that helped me engage further with the growing audience.
2020 rolls around and the pandemic hits the US. I lost my job in March that year when the world came to a standstill and I panicked. My side hustle HAD to work, it was a swim or drown situation. I went ALL in, and began reporting on the election and COVID-19. My audience continued to grow rapidly and folks began to notice, I picked up a few more sponsorship and advertising clients and that kept me afloat for that year.
Since then it has been an incline with some bumps and growing pains but a great experience overall. One year into business and we had become the Spanish-language publication with the most social media followers in all of South Carolina. We are also the only one to have statewide coverage.
I am most proud of our community first approach, which is what I attribute my success to. We go into the community and listen to what they need and what they would find most helpful. We then set out to find answers and connect them to resources. If none exist, then we try to tackle the problem by providing direct services to them. So far we have done food drives, COVID testing clinics, COVID vaccination pop-ups, mutual aid for folks experiencing hardship and a few other things. We are grateful for the partnerships with other entities that have allowed us to expand our reach, but still at the core is our community.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I had to unlearn how to do news the traditional way. Which is often times exploitative, extractive and not representative of marginalized communities. After getting no buy-in from existing publications and having to start my own, I had to do something different. The formula was simple, uplift the immigrant voices and concerns and stop focusing on the things that traditional outlets think they must do to drive clicks. That meant taking a different approach to publishing crime stories and mugshots. That meant going into the community and earning their trust. That led to folks sharing personal stories that allowed us to better pivot our storytelling to ensure people were being taken care of and not being put at risk. I wanted our journalism to empower and show the resilience in our community. That formula worked, but I had to unlearn everything I had learned about how journalism is done and for who. I also have to deal with traditional outlets and colleagues thinking our work is activism and not journalism because they perceive the lived experience as such and not objective. But if our newsrooms don’t reflect the communities they aim to serve are they truly being objective?

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

I started this business out of pocket with about $100 to purchase a domain and hosting. As more things were needed I tapped into my savings. When I lost my job, my boyfriend was supportive and financially supported us for a couple months until his job stopped due to the pandemic. At the time I was on DACA, through the years I had applied for different lines of credit but got denied due to my immigration status. I couldn’t go to a bank and ask for $10,000 to help me get started. But luckily I know how to hustle so some side gigs help keep me afloat until I landed enough clients to start my path toward financial sustainability with the business. My boyfriend is now my husband and he continues to be very supportive. It has gone from just me to me and him to us, a full-time employee and some contractors. We could have achieved sustainability for just us two, but there is so much work to be done to serve our community and provide language access–So we continue to reinvest back into the business with the goal of having 3-5 full-time reporters.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.NuestroEstado.com
• Instagram: @94fernandosoto
• Facebook: @EnNuestroEstado
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/94fernandosoto
• Twitter: @94FernandoSoto

Image Credits
John Gaulden Fernando Soto