An open letter to Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani from New York City's ethnic media

18 Dec 2025

Dear Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani!

The ethnic media system cannot survive another four years of neglect from City Hall.

We write to you as representatives of journalistic publications operating in the world's greatest city, its media capital. Over the past four years, the New York City government's commitment to working with our sector has significantly diminished, as evidenced by its disregard for Local Law 83's advertising mandate.

In 2021, Local Law 83 (LL83) required all city departments and agencies to spend at least 50% of their advertising budgets on ethnic media. It built on a 2020 executive order that was intended to correct the imbalance in media spending. Until then, according to research by the Center for Ethnic Media (CCM), part of the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York (CUNY), 82% of the city's $18 million annual advertising budget went to large mainstream publications with little connection to the immigrant and working-class communities that are the lifeblood of this city. The rest of us got 18%.

The law was a breakthrough attempt to correct this injustice. It was the first such regulation in the United States. Over the past five years, according to CCM, New York has allocated $72 million to ethnic media publishers and broadcasters, and similar laws have been passed in several states and cities across the country.

“Local Law 83 has done a lot to help small, family-owned ethnic media outlets stay afloat in an era where stability and sustainability are a serious challenge due to dwindling institutional funding opportunities and disproportionate competition from social media and tech giants’ advertising platforms,” said Vania Andre, publisher of The Haitian Times.

However, under the Adams administration, LL83 gradually lost its momentum. The city's annual advertising spending declined. This year, Comptroller Brad Lander's office issued a stern rebuke: overall advertising spending fell by 84% after the law went into effect, and in FY24, all city agencies spent only $7,2 million on ethnic media. There's also a lack of transparency regarding how the city decides which ethnic media outlets receive advertising contracts and why.

"For those of us who work in this field, this isn't an abstract compliance issue," said S. Mitra Kalita, publisher of Epicenter NYC and CEO of URL Media, a multi-platform network representing three dozen publications primarily serving communities of color. "It's the difference between being able to support multilingual election coverage and not being able to. It's the difference between whether older immigrants hear about benefits in the newspaper they read or not. It's the difference between whether some ethnic media outlets can exist or not."

Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, you promised to prioritize working-class and immigrant communities—and that must include their information needs. Ethnic media do more than just report news. We explain policies to residents of immigrant neighborhoods, help them access services, and build trust at a time when AI and algorithms create a chaos of misinformation. Information gaps in a city like New York can quickly become life-threatening.

Your transition committees do not include a media-focused body—that is why we are publicly voicing our concerns. We, the signatories of this letter—50 ethnic news outlets across the city in 14 languages—urge you to restore the lifeline of the city's advertising budget by advocating for the full implementation of LL83: restoring advertising levels and ensuring greater transparency in advertising and spending decisions. Your ambitious agenda and its success depend on New Yorkers understanding the resources at their disposal. Widespread access to child care, housing, and transportation is impossible without reliable information explaining how to access them. And that depends on us. The FY25 budget is still in the works. Seize this opportunity to reverse the damage and ensure our publications are included in the city's advertising budget so that we can collectively deliver news, information, and resources to New Yorkers.

Sincerely, the Center for Community Media, URL Media, and the signatories:

Allewaa Alarabi Newspaper Amsterdam News
BK Reader
Black Star News
Bronx Post Bushwick Daily
ChelseaCommunityNews.com | LGBTQCommunityNews.nyc
NepYork
New Jersey Urban News New York Parrot
News India Times Parkchester Times
Speak
Prothom Alo North America Queens Latino
COLlive.com
desh
Desi Talk in New York
Documented
The NY Journal
Epicenter NYC
ForumDaily
Greenpointers
Gujarat Times
Haiti Liberté
Harlem Community Newspapers, Inc. Harlem World Magazine
Illyria newspaper
Immigrantly
Impacto Latino
Irish echo
ITV GOLD
Jewish Post
Khasokhas
Muslim Media Corporation
Radio soleil
Roosevelt Islander Online Sing Tao Daily
The Immigrant's Journal | Caribbean American Weekly | Workers' World Today | New Black Voices
The Indian Panorama The Lo-Down NY
The Manhattan Times | The Bronx Free Press
The South Asian Insider Weekly
The South Asian Times
Time Television | Weekly Bangla Patrika Turkish Journal
Urdu News
Weekly Awaz
Weekly Bangalee
Westchester Hispano | New York Hispano