We launched New California Media in 1996 in San Francisco after a luncheon with 24 ethnic media representatives eager to break out of their silos, exchange content, and gain visibility. 

At the time, we were running the 20-year-old nonprofit Pacific News Service (PNS)—an independent news syndicate dedicated to diversifying the voices in mainstream media. Partnering with ethnic news outlets was a natural extension of that mission. What we didn’t anticipate was just how powerful a sector of journalism we were connecting with.

Within a decade, PNS evolved into New America Media (NAM)—the first and largest association of ethnic news media in the United States. We built partnerships first across California and then nationwide through expos, collaborative reporting projects, awards, and public awareness campaigns. We also pioneered multilingual polling with Sergio Bendixen, who had earlier developed Spanish-language polling for Univision. 

Our polls broke through to the Wall Street Journal’s front page, documenting both the reach of California’s ethnic media (over half of the state’s new majority could name their trusted ethnic news outlet) and their national scale (an audience of 60 million). From 2000 to 2015, these polls enabled ethnic media to project the collective perspectives of their audiences on pivotal public policy issues.

Highlights from our first 20 years include:

• Put the ethnic media sector on the national radar
• Pioneered inter-ethnic and inter-racial reporting collaborations
• Developed innovative social marketing strategies—on issues ranging from teacher recruitment, language access in health care, and CDC vaccine campaigns during the SARS epidemic
• Worked with dozens of journalism schools to integrate ethnic media into their curricula
• Won first prize from the National Council on Foundations for a same-sex marriage awareness campaign ahead of California’s Prop 8
• Developed the first-ever U.S. Census briefings in 12 states to promote the 2010 decennial count
• Educated corporations and organizations on the importance of reaching underserved, emerging consumer markets through in-language, in-culture media that they consume and trust.

In November 2017, NAM closed after overextending itself on a major initiative to build youth media platforms across California. Those youth programs were spun off, and in early 2018 we relaunched as Ethnic Media Services (EMS), fiscally sponsored by the San Francisco Study Center. 

Since then, we have sustained and expanded our support for the ethnic media sector—channeling close to $20 million in advertising and fellowships to outlets, which many credited with helping them survive the devastating pandemic collapse of small business advertising.

Between 2023 and 2025, we extended our model beyond California, building a new cohort of ethnic media in Houston. And in March 2025, we marked a new chapter by adopting a new name: American Community Media, ACoM.