J5.2A Bilingualism in the U.S. Melting Pot: Keeping People Safe and Adapting to Their Changing Ways

Monday, 13 January 2020: 10:45 AM
252B (Boston Convention and Exhibition Center)
Irene Sans, WFTV Channel 9 ABC, Orlando, FL; and J. Gallardo

How is a Spanish broadcast meteorologist different than an English-speaking meteorologist? How is bilingualism important in the field, in the broadcast meteorology field?

I’ve been a broadcast meteorologist for over a decade. I started in Spanish, collaborated with some English stations, then moved to Spanish and now I work for an English local news affiliate in Orlando, FL.
I started my career during the social media revolution. Social media is a different monster the Spanish world. Hispanic residents in the US still depends much on news, but when it comes to weather, studies show that they turned to English speaking TV news to get reliable weather information. How has this changed in recent years with the growth of professional meteorologists in the field? How are we reporting weather on TV and digital? What challenges do we encounter? What advantages do we have? Also, how are English stations or duopolies benefiting from having bilingual meteorologists?

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