La Estrella closure deepens local news desert
La Estrella de Tucson’s closure, driven by corporate cost-cutting despite strong local support, highlights the broader decline of Spanish-language newspapers nationwide, leaving Tucson’s Latino community without a trusted news source and vulnerable to misinformation.

As La Estrella de Tucsón’s newsroom dwindled, local support remained strong — but that wasn’t enough to save the paper. Despite efforts to innovate and connect with the community, corporate cost-cutting and shifting media priorities sealed its fate.
La Estrella’s closure reflects a broader trend of Spanish-language and ethnic newspapers being shuttered nationwide as media companies prioritize profits over local voices. For Tucson’s Latino population — more than 40% of the city — losing their trusted news source means turning to unreliable channels for vital information.
Former La Estrella editor Liliana Lopez Ruelas said she knew there was local support for the publication. She felt it from coworkers who helped her launch the WhatsApp project and who continuously supported her, even when she was the only person at La Estrella.
She felt it when she engaged with the community to understand their needs and when she pitched solutions from her distribution study to her superiors.
“I think there was a lack of vision and sensitivity at higher levels because, to this day, I cannot understand,” she said. “I can’t believe (Lee Enterprises) dismantled the only Spanish-language publication in a city like Tucson.”
While the journalism industry had been slowly declining for more than a decade, the newsroom’s impact on local communities remained strong.

But big corporations often focus only on the numbers, and despite the Star’s continued profit, shutting down La Estrella was simply another cost-cutting measure.
“We’re just a victim of the circumstances. Publications like La Estrella are just like another special section,” said La Estrella’s first editor, Jose Merino. “There is room for more publications like La Estrella; however, I don’t think big corporations are willing to go that route. It’s a way to save money and not have to worry about a publication that you don’t even understand, an audience that you don’t even understand as a mega company.”
Unlike the Star, which relied on paid subscribers, La Estrella was free until the very end. If the Star put a story behind a paywall, La Estrella readers could still read the translated version for free.
Lopez Ruelas said reaching the Latino community became more difficult every day during those final months, with the rise of social media as a news source. But there was still a community reading La Estrella and interacting with the publication.
“There were years when La Estrella enjoyed so much independence and autonomy because no one cared enough at the highest levels,” Lopez Ruelas said. “And they started to care when they started seeing losses, but there wasn’t enough willingness to solve the biggest problems, which for me were circulation, audience, and advertising sales.”
La Estrella’s closure is part of a larger phenomenon of Spanish-language and ethnically diverse papers being gutted as large corporate owners look to cut costs where they see fit.
“La Estrella was created, like other Spanish-language supplements across the country, to carry advertising,” said former La Estrella editor Ernesto Portillo Jr. “There’s a large community out there with spending power, and advertisers wanted to reach them.”
The newspaper industry took a hard hit when advertisers moved online, contributing to widespread cuts.

Another factor is newspaper ownership. La Estrella’s sister company, The Arizona Daily Star, is owned by Lee Enterprises and Gannett; while Lee manages news, sales, and marketing, Gannett oversees circulation, manufacturing, and distribution.
“Corporate buyouts have been a negative for journalism in general. Outside entities buy a locally owned newspaper that has strong local connections, and corporate interests no longer have that local interest,” Portillo Jr. said. “Today newspapers are being bought out largely by hedge funds, and they are in the business of making money, cutting off what they believe is not profitable and then maybe selling off the only profitable side of the business.”
A 2023 Axios report shows that Gannett has laid off nearly half its employees since its 2019 merger with GateHouse. Due to debt accrued by the merger, Gannett has had to cut costs wherever it can to “appease stockholders and remain independent.”
As corporations continue to cut costs year after year, Spanish-language versions remain on the chopping block.
Between 2022 and 2023, the year La Estrella closed, more than 7,000 jobs vanished. The layoffs that La Estrella’s team experienced happened alongside thousands of others on the English side.
“It was a sad day for the history of Spanish-language journalism in Tucson and Southern Arizona,” Merino said. “The closing of La Estrella was a great loss for the community. I think it had a lot of life, many more miles, many years of life as a print publication.”
The closure of La Estrella left an entire community without a reliable news source, forcing them to rely on the internet, which is rife with misinformation, or on chisme, or gossip.
"They’ll find “information that is completely lacking and inaccurate,” Portillo Jr. said. “That’s ultimately the greatest threat to our country and our society.”
Susan Barnett is Deputy Editor of Tucson Spotlight and a University of Arizona alum. Contact her at susan@tucsonspotlight.org.
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