Press Release

The Tampa Tribune and Tampa's WFLA-TV Become Newest Partners In NAHJ's Parity Project

WASHINGTON - The Tampa Tribune and WFLA-TV in Tampa, Fla., both owned by Media General, Inc., are the latest news organizations to partner with the National Association of Hispanic Journalists' (NAHJ) in the Parity Project - an innovative new effort to improve newsroom diversity and the quality of news coverage on Latinos.

Both The Tampa Tribune and WFLA-TV are already pioneers in newsroom convergence efforts, with their staffs often working together when covering stories. Through the Parity Project, NAHJ will help each organization to find Latinos for newsroom job openings and will also help each operation to develop stronger ties with the Latino community in Tampa and surrounding Hillsborough County, Fla.

Latinos currently comprise more than 20% of the nearly 1 million people in the Tampa metropolitan area. The Tampa Tribune's daily circulation is more than 238,000, and Tampa is the 13th largest broadcast market in the United States.

"We at NAHJ are thrilled with this new partnership," said NAHJ president Juan Gonzalez. "Tampa has a large Latino community with a long, rich history dating back to the Cuban tobacco workers who migrated to Ybor City in the late 19th century. We welcome the chance to help these fine news organizations better serve all of their news consumers."

"Latinos are an increasingly important part of our community and our readership," said Tribune editor Frank Denton. "They need to be an even more important part of our journalism. We're looking forward to drawing on NAHJ's ideas and experience as we improve our work."

"News Channel 8 is looking forward to working with the NAHJ to improve the station's coverage of and ties to this vitally important segment of our community," said Forrest Carr, news director at WFLA-TV.

Media General, Inc. is a multimedia corporation that owns newspapers and television stations, primarily in the southeastern U.S.

Through the Parity Project, which was founded in April 2003, NAHJ currently partners with several newspapers that are owned by the E.W. Scripps Company; Lee Enterprises, Inc. and Pulitzer Newspapers, Inc. CBS owned-and-operated KCNC-TV in Denver is also a partner.

In less than 16 months of existence, the project has already demonstrated dramatic success at several of the first newspapers that became participants.

Principal funding for the project comes from the Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation, with additional support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation as from contributions from NAHJ's own members.

NAHJ established the Parity Project as a way to accelerate diversity in America's newsrooms. A recent ASNE survey shows that Latinos make up only four-percent of the news staff at daily English-language newspapers in the U.S. A new study by the Radio-TV News Directors Association (RTNDA) shows that Latinos comprise only six-percent of the news staff at local English-language TV stations. But the latest census figures show that Latinos make up 13% of the overall U.S. population, with that figure projected to rise to 25% by the year 2050.

Founded in 1984, NAHJ is based in Washington, D.C. NAHJ is the nation's largest organization for Latino journalists, with more than 2,000 members. They work primarily in the English and Spanish-language print, photo, broadcast and online media. For more information about NAHJ, please visit our Web site at www.nahj.org, or call (202) 662-7145.