Starting with the February edition, four pages of Hyattsville Life & Times will be published in Spanish.
The insert, Hyattsville Este Mes, will feature news, business and human-interest articles from the English-language pages of the newspaper, translated into Spanish by interpreters at the University of Maryland’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese.
Nigel F. Maynard, managing editor of Hyattsville Life & Times, said the Spanish-language insert will help the city’s large Spanish-speaking populations better engage with the community.
“We have a large Latino population in Hyattsville, and to be able to reach them with news and information they need and can use is a wonderful thing,” Maynard said. “I think we should also support our fellow neighbors in a moment that can seem hostile toward them. Hopefully, this small gesture can help them navigate the current climate.”
Hyattsville’s sister publication, College Park Here & Now, also will feature a four-page Spanish-language insert, College Park Este Mes. Both are part of a pilot project paid for with $8,000 in grants from Prince George’s County Council Vice Chair Eric Olson (District 3) and members Tom Dernoga (District 1) and Wanika Fisher (District 2).
“We want the Spanish-speaking community to be able to read the same news about Hyattsville and College Park as those who read the English-language version of the newspaper every month,” said College Park Here & Now Managing Editor Sharon O’Malley. “So for example, if there’s a city election, we would do a story in English about the city election, and then we would translate it into Spanish so that the Spanish-speaking audience also can have that important information.”
The newspapers’ publisher, Streetcar Suburbs Publishing, will include the insert in each issue through the summer, according to Executive Director Kit Slack. Slack said the nonprofit publishing company will look for additional grants that will allow the insert to become a permanent feature in both papers.
Slack, who speaks Spanish, said being the parent of public school children has made her aware “that there are a lot of recent immigrants who are residents in our city, and they get our newspaper, but it doesn’t currently serve them as well as we could.”
According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s latest American Community Survey, about 40% of Hyattsville residents consider themselves Hispanic or Latino. At Hyattsville Elementary School, 39% of students are learning English; that proportion is 56% at Felegy Elementary School in West Hyattsville, according to 2025 data from the state of Maryland.
To read the inaugural edition of Hyattsville Este Mes, check your mailbox the week of Jan. 26.
Managing Editor Sharon O’Malley contributed to this story.