L.A. Daily News To Work With Latinos To Improve News Coverage In Southern California

Latinos in the San Fernando Valley met recently with the staff of the Los Angeles Daily News, urging the newspaper to use more community sources and write more stories showing how Latinos contribute to the area.

“We need heroes,” said Evelina Alarcon, the executive director of a Los Angeles-based group called the Cesar E. Chavez National Holiday. “Go out and find the people. Ensure that the coverage is there.”

Alarcon was one of about 100 people at a March 7 public forum where Latinos gathered to critique the Daily News’ coverage of the community and suggest story ideas. Organizers of the meeting say they hope the gathering encouraged Latinos to exchange story ideas and sources with the paper.

The Daily News and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ) organized the event.

The Daily News of Los Angeles, owned by the MediaNews Group, Inc. newspaper chain, is one of 23 newsrooms to join NAHJ’s Parity Project, a national initiative seeking to increase the number of Latinos in selected English-language newsrooms and improve news coverage of the Latino community.

As part of the Parity Project, NAHJ works with partnering companies to recruit veteran Latino journalists as well as journalists beginning their careers. In addition, NAHJ works with partnering companies to improve their relationship with the Latino community by holding town hall meetings and forming advisory committees made up of Latino members.

The Daily News serves Southern California’s San Fernando Valley and nearby communities in northern Los Angeles County and eastern Ventura County. It has a Sunday circulation of 201,000.

Daily News editor Ron Kaye moderated the two-hour town hall meeting on the campus of California State University, Northridge.

The meeting was “long overdue,” Kaye said.
“It’s our goal to have more local voices” in stories throughout the newspaper, Kaye said. “We need to do a better job of reaching out.”

Students, merchants, politicians and activists encouraged Kaye to hire at least one Latino editor and include a greater range of political commentaries in the editorial pages. San Fernando Mayor Julie Ruelas told Kaye that she wants a more “liberal” voice in the paper.

“Your paper is pretty conservative,” Ruelas said. “I don’t have a newspaper to pick up that gives the other side.”

Daily News publisher Tracy Rafter told Ruelas that the paper does have a history of being conservative, though it is now centrist and does not favor one political party over the other. Rafter pointed out that the paper endorsed Democratic challenger Sen. John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election, and did not support Republican President George W. Bush.

During the meeting, Maria Reza, a retired school district administrator, asked whether editors plan to promote the Latinos already in the newsroom.

“What kind of commitment does the Daily News have to parity in its management?” said Reza, who pointed out she did not see one Latino editor at the paper.

Rafter said she wants Latinos in all levels of the newsroom. “Parity is parity. It has to be in all ranks of the company,” Rafter said. “We want to address it across the board.”

NAHJ also met with the Daily News staff to talk about demographic and cultural trends in the Latino community.

According to the Knight Foundation’s 2005 Power Reporting study, almost 17% of the Daily News’ editorial professional staff is non-white while the majority of people living in the paper’s coverage area (53%) are people of color, with a Latino population of 37%.

Primary funding for NAHJ’s Parity Project comes from the Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation.

The Parity Project is intended to serve as a model for the entire journalism industry to follow when it comes to improving newsroom diversity and coverage of diverse communities.