Press Release

Villafañe and other NAHJ Members Participate in International Seminar about Spanish and Journalism in the U.S.

Media Contacts: Daniela Montalvo, (202) 662-7152

Verónica Villafañe, president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, urged those attending an international seminar in Spain to strive to form “a universal Spanish” as the number and strength of Spanish-language media outlets continues to grow in the United States.

Villafañe made the statements at the international seminar “Spanish in the U.S. Press” held on May 4-6 in a monastery in Yuso in San Millán de la Cogolla (La Rioja), where the first texts written in Spanish appeared more than 10 centuries ago.

Villafañe said that “the needs of those of us who work in Spanish evolve from day to day” and that “the reality and conditions for Hispanic journalists have changed because Spanish-language media keeps growing” in the U.S., as quoted by the Efe News Agency.

“We have to find a universal Spanish to manage the regional differences within the language while also being sensitive to all the communities,” Villafañe said. “That is our challenge.”

The seminar which included experts in the Spanish language, representatives of the Real Academia de la Lengua Española, the country’s primary arbiter when it comes to Spanish language, and journalists from the United States who work in Spanish, sought to analyze the “unity” and the state of the language. It also served to strengthen plans to work with NAHJ on a second edition of its Manual de Estilo, a stylebook for U.S.-based journalists who work in Spanish.

Published in 2004, NAHJ has sold more than 3,000 copies of the first edition, which serves as a reference guide for those journalists seeking to use correct Spanish in the U.S. media. The stylebook is just one of NAHJ’s efforts to strengthen and intensify its training programs and services for Spanish-language journalists in the U.S.

The seminar was put together by Alberto Gómez Font, general coordinator of Fundéu (Fundación de Español Urgente), who is also the main editor of NAHJ’s Manual de estilo.

Font commented on the seminar’s purpose to the Associated Press. “The growing importance of Hispanic press in the United States is reason enough for experts in the language to be interested in this new kind of Spanish: the U.S. Spanish, with its own characteristics and socioeconomic situation, which makes it a more international Spanish, a Spanish of the future.”

The seminar, with the participation of Villafañe, Liza Gross, Managing Editor for Presentation and Operations of the The Miami Herald, Enrique Durand, news director for CNN en Español, and others from the U.S. was covered widely in the press in Spain. Here are links to some of the articles (Spanish-language):