ADMA establishes an international network of journalists and media organizations to strengthen collaboration, amplify Azorean voices worldwide, and build lasting bridges of communication across the Atlantic. Coordinated by Professor Diniz Borges of the Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute at Fresno State, the initiative seeks to create a shared journalistic space connecting the Azores with their global diaspora.
The Azores are taking a significant step toward reshaping their international media landscape with the official presentation of the Azores-Diaspora Media Alliance (ADMA), an ambitious initiative designed to bring together journalists, broadcasters, publishers, and news organizations throughout the archipelago and its worldwide diaspora. Presented by Regional Secretary for Parliamentary Affairs and Communities Paulo Estevão, the association is expected to begin operations in the coming days, establishing a coordinated international network to encourage cross-border reporting, expand journalistic audiences, and strengthen professional partnerships. The initiative seeks to address a longstanding gap in transatlantic communication: the limited circulation of news between the islands and the substantial Azorean communities established in North America, Brazil, and other parts of the world. More than a mechanism for exchanging information, ADMA represents an effort to create a common journalistic landscape across the Atlantic, bringing together perspectives, experiences, and professional resources that have historically remained separated by geography.
The announcement was made during the association’s public presentation at the Regional Secretariat for Parliamentary Affairs and Communities, where Estevão described the project as the culmination of several years of planning and consultation. Referring to an estimated global population of nearly five million Azoreans and people of Azorean descent, he emphasized the potential for expanding the reach of regional journalism beyond the archipelago’s geographical boundaries. News produced within diaspora communities frequently remains unknown in the Azores, while important reporting from the islands often fails to reach audiences abroad. ADMA intends to bridge that divide through systematic cooperation, greater circulation of journalistic content, and opportunities for shared reporting initiatives. Estevão also noted the encouraging response received during consultations with media organizations in the United States and Canada, where the prospect of greater collaboration has generated considerable interest.
To support these objectives, the Regional Government plans to provide an initial €50,000 in 2027 for collaborative journalism projects, with the possibility of expanding the program following its experimental first year. Funding will be directed toward journalists working in partnership with media organizations in the Azores and the diaspora, rather than exclusively toward media companies. An independent jury will evaluate proposals, with genuine transatlantic collaboration serving as a central requirement. This approach recognizes that meaningful journalistic cooperation depends not simply on institutional agreements but on the creativity, initiative, and professional engagement of the journalists themselves.
The association will operate through a dedicated digital platform, providing registration opportunities for journalists and media organizations, professional communication spaces, and mechanisms for sharing news and other content. A public section will make selected material accessible to broader audiences, provided that both the journalists and their respective media organizations authorize its publication. The initiative is also expected to maintain its own facilities, administrative personnel, and social media presence, establishing the organizational infrastructure necessary to sustain its activities and encourage regular interaction among participating professionals.
Regional Director for Communities José Andrade placed the creation of ADMA within the broader historical experience of the Azorean people, recalling six centuries of settlement, more than four centuries of emigration, and nearly two centuries of journalism. These intertwined histories, he observed, have contributed to the formation of an identity that extends across continents, from Brazil and Uruguay to the United States, Hawaii, Bermuda, and Canada. Throughout this history, the press has served as an essential instrument for preserving language, transmitting cultural memory, and maintaining connections between emigrant communities and their ancestral islands. From the earliest Portuguese-language newspapers established in emigrant communities to contemporary digital media, journalism has helped sustain a sense of belonging across generations and geographical distances.
ADMA Coordinator Professor Diniz Borges, founding director of the Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute (PBBI) at California State University, Fresno, emphasized that Azorean identity cannot be understood solely through the geographical boundaries of the nine islands. “The Azores are more fully the Azores because of their diaspora,” Borges stated, arguing that emigrant communities and their descendants represent not merely the preservation of historical memory but an extraordinary reservoir of knowledge, creativity, professional experience, and civic participation. In this understanding, the diaspora is not simply an extension of the archipelago’s past but an indispensable participant in its present and future, contributing new perspectives and opportunities to the evolving cultural and intellectual life of the Azorean world.
For the Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute at Fresno State, the initiative reflects its longstanding commitment to strengthening intellectual, cultural, and institutional relationships between the Azores and their communities abroad. Through educational programs, publications, oral history projects, cultural initiatives, and international partnerships, PBBI has consistently promoted a vision of the diaspora as an active participant in the contemporary life and future development of the archipelago. ADMA extends that commitment into journalism, creating new possibilities for professional collaboration, the exchange of perspectives, and a more comprehensive understanding of the Azorean experience across geographical boundaries. It also reinforces the Institute’s broader mission of ensuring that the voices of the diaspora are not merely heard from a distance but become integral to the conversations shaping the cultural and civic future of the islands.
Borges also emphasized that the association must remain open to the ideas, contributions, and evolving needs of journalists and media organizations themselves. Rather than becoming confined to the original vision of its founders, ADMA should develop through the active participation of the professionals it intends to serve. This collaborative philosophy seeks to ensure that the alliance remains responsive to the changing realities of journalism, including the challenges of digital transformation, audience fragmentation, and the need for sustainable models of independent reporting. During the presentation, Beatriz Leite introduced the association’s digital platform, visual identity, and principal objectives, offering participants an overview of its proposed operations and the opportunities available to participating organizations.
Ultimately, ADMA seeks to accomplish something that extends beyond the exchange of news stories. It aspires to create a shared journalistic space in which the islands and their diaspora can recognize one another as participants in the same evolving cultural and historical narrative. At a time when geographical distance is increasingly overcome by digital communication, the challenge is no longer simply to transmit information across the Atlantic but to ensure that the stories, experiences, and voices of Azorean communities become part of a common conversation. By bringing together journalists working in different countries, languages, and media environments, the alliance has the potential to encourage more comprehensive reporting on the issues that unite and distinguish the communities of the Azorean world.
For a people whose history has been written through departures, crossings, and enduring attachments to their islands, this new alliance offers an opportunity to transform the Atlantic from a geography of separation into a living space of communication. The future of Azorean journalism may increasingly be written not from one shore or the other, but through the collective voices of a people whose homeland has long extended beyond the horizon. In that shared endeavor, ADMA seeks to ensure that the distance between the islands and their diaspora is measured not by the ocean that separates them, but by the stories, ideas, and human connections that continue to bring them together.
Based on a story by Vasco Blayer for Diário dos Açores-Paulo Viveiros-diector.