But although she has seen some Brazilian community members reading and sharing the Portuguese-language articles, she also would like the newspapers to do more to fully serve her community, especially its newer members, such as informing people about operating food businesses or registering cars.
The Portuguese-language services from the Martha’s Vineyard Times and the Vineyard Gazette demonstrate how some legacy news outlets are turning to technology to try to reach local communities that are increasingly diverse and often speak different languages — and hopefully turn them into paying subscribers. While these initiatives can reflect a sincere effort to serve the public with reliable information, they also often highlight the limitations of technology and gaps in staff diversity for many traditional English-language newsrooms.
In Massachusetts, the number of Latino residents grew to 887,000 in 2020, from 627,000 in 2010, according to census data. Language isn’t the only barrier that news organizations must tackle to inform changing communities. A 2023 Pew Research Center study, for example, showed that nearly three-quarters of Latinos in the United States speak English, a shift from prior generations.
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On Martha’s Vineyard, the Brazilian population makes up an estimated 20 to 30 percent of the island’s 20,000 year-round residents. The Brazilian community has grown gradually in recent decades after an earlier wave of Portuguese immigration to the Cape and Islands linked to the whaling and fishing industries. Many of the island’s Brazilian immigrants have followed former neighbors from their hometowns in search of work.
Both newspapers on the Vineyard are under new leadership this year. The new publishers said trying to better serve the island’s Brazilian population is a priority.
The Times named Charles Sennott — a Vineyard resident and former Globe reporter who founded The GroundTruth Project — as its publisher in December. And the Vineyard Gazette hired Monica Brady-Myerov, a former WBUR reporter who later founded and sold an audio company, as its publisher in February. Both are white and do not identify as Hispanic or Latino. Brady-Myerov is fluent in Portuguese and previously lived and reported in Brazil; Sennott speaks Spanish.
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The Times debuted its artificial intelligence-powered translation service from GTranslate in February, calling its Portuguese version “O Tempo,” which means “The Times.” Readers can choose to translate articles into 11 languages, including Portuguese, using a box on the bottom-left corner of the screen. The Gazette’s tool, launched in May, works similarly, but is powered by Google Translate.
The Times has a paywall on its website, while the Gazette is free online. Both papers also sell print subscriptions and generate revenue from advertising.
Nunes and Brazilian journalist Paula Moura, who formerly worked at WBUR and “Frontline” and is a contributor to the Times, are helping to fine-tune the newspaper’s service by periodically checking in on articles to spot problems, though Nunes doesn’t have a paid role. Although both said the tool is largely accurate, there are some mistakes.
“It’s a big deal to have the news in Portuguese,” Moura said. “Of course, the translation is not perfect.”
Both publishers recognize that, too.
“It really can be quite stiff and quite clear that this is not written by a human being who speaks Portuguese as their fluent, native language,” said Sennott. “That’s a level of perfection that we strive for, but we get it that we have a long way to go.”
It’s unclear how much the Portuguese-language articles are catching on among Brazilians on the island. Both the Gazette and the Times said they didn’t have access to readership numbers for translated articles.
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The translated articles are reaching some readers. Sennott reported in March that some Brazilian parents referenced in a meeting with school officials the Times’s coverage of some community members complaining that the school’s English Language Learning program was a drain on resources. Nearly 40 percent of students in the district report speaking a first language other than English, state data show.
And in Nunes’s Facebook group, called Brazukada, which loosely means a big group of Brazilian people, some members have recently shared articles, such as the Times’s and Gazette’s coverage of the island’s first Brazil Fest.
“Now more people get a chance to read the newspapers, because that’s an option there,” said Pricila Vilaça, an organizer of the island’s Brazil Fest.
Vilaça, who works at a nonprofit and is an Uber driver, mainly reads articles in English, but toggles to Portuguese when she is unfamiliar with some of the English words. Recently she found the Portuguese-language version of a Times article about climate change helpful, as she didn’t recognize some environmental terms in English.
But some members of the community encourage the papers to do more to connect with Brazilians.
Tainá Chaves, who has lived in both Brazil and Martha’s Vineyard, said she wants to see more coverage of local events and opportunities to unite different communities on the island. Many Brazilian people don’t typically go to newspapers for information, she said, so there needs to be stronger outreach.
“Let them know that there’s specific ways that you can go and that you can click that will have your own language,” she said.
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As a native Portuguese speaker who also speaks English, Luciana Fuller, who moved to the island from Brazil in 1993, said she reads articles in both languages.
”It’s nice to see and to read it in Portuguese,” she said. “It brings a different perspective to the reader, so it’s a little more clear.“
Jessica Retis, director of the University of Arizona’s journalism school and its bilingual journalism master’s program, said automatic translation tools are fast ways to produce stories in other languages, but they can’t replace having diverse journalists who understand a community’s language and way of life.
“Language is the door, but understanding the language gives you the entrance to understand the culture, which is what we’re looking for,” Retis said.
Both the Times and the Gazette acknowledge they need to work on boosting staff diversity. Neither has a full-time staff member who identifies as Brazilian. (The Gazette has four reporters; the Times has seven.)
Latino journalists are underrepresented in newsrooms across the country, according to a 2023 report from the Latino Donor Collaborative and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
“I would like to [diversify the Gazette staff],” Brady-Myerov said. “Certainly, that would add a tremendous amount to our perspective and our coverage.”
Both newsrooms are doing more to connect with Brazilian communities than just the translations. The Gazette profiled the owner of a local Brazilian clothing store and published the piece in both English and Portuguese in its annual free edition mailed to every household. And Moura is a regular contributor to the Times who has reported for the paper from Brazil. Both papers also cover Brazilian events and have spotlighted community leaders such as Nunes and Dukes County public health educator Fernando Lana.
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“We think they’re a vibrant, really important part of our readership,” Sennott said of the Brazilian population.
Brady-Myerov is also mulling starting some sort of texting service, perhaps on the popular app WhatsApp, to reach Brazilian readers. And she’s forming an editorial advisory board to better inform coverage, which will include a member of the Brazilian community.
“We need to do a better job of letting them know the Gazette is here for them too,” she said. “It’s not enough just to put the translation tool up and say, ‘Anything you want to read is there.’ ”
Aidan Ryan can be reached at aidan.ryan@globe.com. Follow him @aidanfitzryan.
