DOWNWARD TREND:
Latino employment at seven television stations broadcasting in New York City declined from 12.2% to 11.2% between 1997 and 2000, finds a study released June 14 by the New York chapter of the National Hispanic Media Coalition.
A total of 2,000 persons are employed at the stations, 224 of them Latino. Prepared by the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, the study's authors comment that while the percentage of Latinos in the business shrank, New York City's Latino population grew 30% during the last decade, up from 2.2 million to 2.9 million. Latinos make up 27% of the city population. The Latino population in nearby New Jersey grew by 51% from 739,861 to 1.1 million.
PRLDEF's Angelo Falcón singled out for criticism WNET-TV, Channel 13, because it was one of the worst-performing stations even though it is a public television station. Latino full-time staff at WNET dropped from 11.7% in 1997 to 10.6% in 2000. The 12-page study "Still on the Outside Looking In" is available for free at www.prldef.org/IPR/policy.htm
EL SENTINEL:
The Orlando Sentinel Communications will begin publishing in August a weekly Spanish- and English-language newspaper, El Sentinel, for the Latino community. It will cover local, national and international news. Sentinel Communications publishes The Orlando Sentinel. An Internet site, elSentinel.com, will also be launched, offering the latest news affecting the
Latino community.
Sentinel columnist María Padilla was promoted to Hispanic affairs editor and
will serve as editor of El Sentinel and elSentinel.com
RESOURCE GUIDE:
The National Association of Hispanic Journalists will release its first-ever resource guide on covering the Latino community during its convention in Phoenix June 20 - 23. The guide, which contains six chapters and an introduction by Marie Arana of The Washington Post on The Elusive Hispanic/Latino Identity, was published by Knight-Ridder. Copies will be available free at the convention. For more information call NAHJ at (202) 662-7143.
