November 14, 2005

President's Message from Veronica Villafaņe

Dear friends and colleagues,

It is undoubtedly one of the worst times to be working in the news industry. Across the country, layoffs, buyouts, shutdowns and threats of hostile takeovers have left thousands of journalists wondering about their future.

In the midst of all this angst, there is another concern: will media companies continue to diversify their newsrooms in this changing media landscape?

We should all be afraid... not just of losing our jobs, but losing our voice. For years we have struggled to convince those in charge of hiring journalists that Latino, Black, Asian American and Native American journalists were necessary in all newsrooms seeking to accurately reflect the world we live in and report about. Now, with so many news companies downsizing, newsrooms may regress in the progress they have made hiring journalists of color.

Newsday, The New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News and the San Jose Mercury News all announced cutbacks in recent months. The latest company to join the rest: The Baltimore Sun. They just announced they are asking for 75 people to take voluntary buyouts. Tribune stations WPHL-TV in Philadelphia and KSWB-TV in San Diego have recently ceased their news operations. A total of 17 broadcasters of color lost their jobs.

All in all, hundreds of jobs are gone. At Newsday, 49 took buyouts. In Philadelphia, the Inquirer and the Daily News were expected to cut a combined 100 newsroom jobs. In San Jose, where the Mercury News not only shut down Nuevo Mundo, its 9 year-old Spanish-language publication, but also sold its Vietnamese weekly, 56 people took a buyout. Five Latinos took the buyout. Two others who applied and were rejected opted to leave anyway. In just one shot, more than 20% of the Latino staff at the paper was gone.

What is amazing is that in the case of Philadelphia and San Jose, more people than were needed applied for the buyout. This means many journalists are unhappy or unsatisfied with their jobs, their employers or perhaps overwhelmed by the uncertainty of the business we are in.

It seems like the news business is crumbling. Many critics argue that the industry is now a war of profits over public service and nobody knows what to expect next.

While we can not fight against business decisions, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists is committed to raising our concerns with these media companies and help our members, who fell into the black hole of the bottom-line, with the next phase of their careers.