http://www.newsobserver.com/152/story/401742.html

Peggy Lim, Staff Writer

Ana Mar'a Combe is calling all the beautiful Latina ladies of Johnston County. She wants to splash your fresh face across the cover of her new Spanish-language tabloid.
Look out, she may soon be soliciting your mama's best chili recipe, crashing your cousin's quinceanera party or husband's soccer game and snapping shots of your friends swishing their hips at hoppin' Smithfield discotecas.

Combe needs your help to fill her free weekly paper, called "Estamos Unidos" (which translates to "We're United"). About 5,000 copies of the first edition hit stands across the county Thursday and Friday.

As statewide immigration patterns have shifted in recent years from predominantly single, seasonal male workers to a more gender-balanced mix of longer-term workers, Johnston and other rural counties bordering big metro areas have emerged as magnets for Hispanic families ready to settle down.

Hispanics flock to counties such as Johnston for the same reasons other residents do: proximity to jobs, cheaper housing, more land and rural charm.

But the number of Hispanics in Johnston, about 15,000 according to 2005 estimates, has increased at a rate three times as fast as the total population.

And Hispanics make up 13 percent of students in Johnston schools. That is more than the 7 percent in Wake County schools.

Such conditions make Johnston ripe for a third paper to compete with the Triangle's two established Spanish-language newspapers, Que Pasa and La Conexi-n.

"Kids being born in our state really changed the kind of info [Hispanics] are looking for," said Federico van Gelderen, a former Que Pasa publisher and a well-known leader in the Hispanic community.

Families wanting to put roots down here care about more than soft news from back home or soccer digests of Latino teams, van Gelderen said. They thirst for local news about the people in their communities. "And they really want to play by the rules. A lot of people don't realize that," he said.

"They want to give their families a better life," Combe agrees.

Combe (pronounced Comb-bay) moved to Clayton from Peru five years ago. She has been planning the paper's launch for about a year, following a template developed by her sister, Amalia Combe, and brother-in-law Juan Peralta.

About three years ago, they started a 16-page weekly in Harrisonburg, Va., which has ballooned to 64 pages. The colorful weekly, called "Nuevos Horizontes" (or "New Horizons"), reaches Roanoke, Richmond and parts of West Virginia, among other places.

Mike Leary, publisher of La Conexi-n, the Triangle's oldest Spanish-language newspaper, says the new paper may face challenges breaking into the Triangle market. Leary started La Conexi-n on a shoestring budget in 1995.

"I was a moron back then, now I'm a visionary," he said jokingly.

Leary was around before the U.S. Census came out in 2000 with the first solid numbers tracking local Hispanic populations across the state in 10 years. The numbers revealed the state had one of the fastest-growing Hispanic populations in the nation -- catching the eye of regional and national advertisers.

A challenging market

The infusion of advertising dollars meant more money but also more competitors clamoring for a share of the pie.

In 2001, Winston Salem-based Que Pasa entered the Triangle market with radio stations and a Spanish-language paper. In 2003, La Ley, a 100,000-watt FM station owned by Raleigh's Curtis Media, followed. Univision and Telefutura, the nation's top Spanish-language TV networks respectively, quickly joined the fray.

Ana Mar'a Combe hopes her paper will do well by focusing on Johnston County.

The county's Hispanic immigrants, largely Mexicans, have rural backgrounds with limited education, she said. Many likely were not voracious readers of newspapers back home either. But Combe has a few tools to reel them in.

Taking a page from her sister's success, Combe will feature each week the picture of a pretty Latina with a caption of where she works. She will include plentiful photos from local dance halls and restaurants where mariachi bands serenade diners. She'll toss in Johnston County soccer league stats, a recipe of the week and horoscopes.

Combe, who works part time as a counselor for Meeting Street Substance Abuse Counseling Services in Smithfield, also plans to expose her readers to serious subjects. She has lined up articles from the Johnston County Community College small business center about getting a business license and from Harbor Inc., a Smithfield shelter, about the dynamics of domestic violence.

She is not ready to take on all the responsibilities that longtime newspapers such as La Conexi-n have tackled, including running "Little World Cup" soccer tournaments, backing Miss U.S. Latina pageant contestants, holding Latin festivals and organizing business seminars.

But she knows from her sister's experience that she'll have plenty of other opportunities to empower and educate -- even when the questions may be as basic as where to find the tastiest torta milanesa or a good church to baptize a baby.

Staff writer Peggy Lim can be reached at 836-5799 or plim@newsobserver.com.