This is a look at a company in Texas that's starting up a new chain of Spanish-language newspapers. Rumbo looks at the demographic trends which say Texas could have a majority of Spanish speakers in 20 years and places its bet.

An excerpt from the NYT story:

AN ANTONIO - The headquarters of Rumbo, a new chain of Spanish-language newspapers, are in an old office building here, a short stroll away from the Alamo, where Mexican troops in 1836 sought to quell the secessionist ambitions of English-speaking colonists in Texas.

The secessionists, of course, ultimately succeeded in their goal, ensuring more than a century and a half of Anglo dominance in Texas. But now Rumbo is building momentum against that dominance, one reader at a time.

In one of the most closely watched experiments in the publishing industry, Rumbo has started four Spanish-language daily newspapers in Texas in the past year, starting in San Antonio before going to Houston, Austin and the Rio Grande Valley. Hispanics will become a majority in the state in 20 years or so, according to Steve Murdock, the Texas state demographer, and are already the largest ethnic group or majority in several of its largest cities.

Rumbo (pronounced ROOM-boh), which gets its name from a Spanish word that means "heading to" - as in "heading to the United States" or "heading to a better life" - is betting that the state's growing Hispanic population is ready for a sophisticated daily newspaper in Spanish that mixes coverage of local news and sports with commentary and dispatches from Latin America. The writers Mario Vargas Llosa and Carlos Fuentes are among Rumbo's regular contributors, their essays published in the same tabloid pages as reports on local soccer leagues.