By Sylvia Maria Gross
Kansas City, MO – Milatino.com began as a local website to alert Kansas City area Latinos to interesting events around town. Its founder Winston Jimenez had seen similar sites in other cities. Jimenez was born in Colombia, South America, and moved to the United States when he was 8 years old. He traveled the world serving in the Marine Corps and the Navy. And after earning an MBA, Jimenez was looking to help businesses reach his demographic - second generation, English-speaking Latinos.
More than 40,000 people now visit the flashy milatino.com each month - for a mix of news, fashion, local society and music. And the Kansas City Star has started linking to milatino videos from its homepage. But Jimenez told KCUR's Sylvia Maria Gross that it started out as a kind of hobby.
Kansas City Star Editor Mark Zieman says the newspaper decided to partner with milatino because he felt Jimenez was reaching an important audience.