Sept. 14, 2026, SPRINGFIELD, Mass. — New England Public Media has received $100,000 in capacity-building support from the MassMutual Foundation for Latinos de Aquí, an initiative to produce bilingual stories featuring the vibrant Latino community in western Massachusetts.
Latinos de Aquí will launch on NEPM’s YouTube channel and across its social media accounts on Sept. 15, the start of Hispanic Heritage Month. The first full length piece is an intimate portrait of Radamés Lopez, owner of RAD BBQ in Springfield, Massachusetts. He tells the story behind his successful Texas style BBQ food truck, from finding redemption after time in prison to becoming a self-taught pitmaster, and will premiere on Sept. 23. Twenty videos are planned as part of the one-year pilot.
The pilot was inspired by an existing project: Conexión, a bilingual video series sharing first-person stories from Latino communities connecting with the outdoors across New England in partnership with the New England News Collaborative and NPR. While NEPM will continue to partner with the NENC and NPR on Conexión, this new initiative will focus primarily on economic development in the region through short-form visual storytelling in the Latino community. It will also be an opportunity for emerging journalists and content creators in NEPM’s internship program to develop professional skills.
“This grant strengthens NEPM's ability to tell stories that reflect the communities we serve while helping cultivate the next generation of content producers,” said Matt Abramovitz, president of NEPM and vice president of audience strategy and operations at GBH. “We're grateful to the MassMutual Foundation for investing in a program that expands opportunity, builds skills and brings new voices into local journalism.”
Conexión has generated over 2.5 million views through bilingual short-form video storytelling, helping NEPM reach audiences across western Massachusetts and beyond.
The grant has also funded the hiring of Luis Salazar, who will lead bilingual digital content production and help expand NEPM's community-centered storytelling efforts. He will work with several college interns throughout the year, providing hands-on media training to complete the projects.
"I’m a Springfield native and a western Mass. resident for life and I’m excited to work with Luis on this effort to highlight the voices of the Latino community living and working here through short-form videos," said Elizabeth Román, executive editor for news at NEPM, and executive producer for the project.
"Latinos de Aquí are video portraits of Latinos in western Massachusetts as workers, entrepreneurs, professionals, human beings, and, most of all, your neighbors," said Salazar.
Salazar joins NEPM with more than 20 years of experience in corporate media and as a freelance documentary filmmaker. Born in Lima, Peru and based in Holyoke since 2017, he brings a bilingual-bicultural lens to documentary and community storytelling, and will work directly with Elizabeth and NEPM interns throughout the storytelling process, from story development and reporting to editing and digital distribution.
“Giving aspiring journalists an opportunity to hone their skills before they enter the workforce is also an important element of what we do in the NEPM newsroom,” Román said.
In addition to supporting Salazar’s digital producer position, the grant will fund production equipment and evaluation tools that will help NEPM strengthen the program and measure its long-term impact.
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