By Mark Fitzgerald
EDITOR & PUBLISHER

CHICAGO- At 6:30 local time Thursday, when Iowa voters start ambling across living rooms and school gyms to line up for their presidential caucus choices, the huge out-of-town press corps eagerly awaiting results will include reporters from U.S. Spanish-language papers.

Just by itself, ImpreMedia, the nation's largest publisher of Spanish-langauge papers, will have six reporters out on the presidential campaign trail at least through the Feb. 5 mutli-state "Super Duper Primary."

The apparently unprecedented coverage by Spanish-language newspaper reporters reflects a campaign that has frequently revolved around immigration issues -- and the growth in the Hispanic population in general and eligible voters in particular. Latinos, ImpreMedia notes, are the fastest growing segment of the electorate.

If Spanish-language papers are paying more attention this early, it's because after Feb. 5 more than 80% of the Latino population will already have had their chance to vote. And the nation's Hispanics are also largely clustered in so-called "battleground" states such as Florida, California, Arizona, and Colorado.

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