The Parity Project gets its feet wet in Salt Lake

By Michele Gonzalez, Parity Project Associate Director - Southwest

Latinos are making quite a bit of noise in the Beehive State and they got a little louder as the National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ) launched the Parity Project at The Salt Lake Tribune in Utah on April 18, 2006.

A town hall at the paper that evening was greeted with skepticism by approximately 60 Latino community leaders, activists, legislators, non-profit organizers and citizens.

Carlos Linares, executive director, of the Utah Hispanic Chamber of Commerce stated, “This room is a who’s who of decision makers in the Utah Latino community. If you want to make a change the right people are in this room to help you make it happen.”

The most common sentiments expressed were that the paper had no sense of the spirit of the Latino community. There were also complaints about the lack of coverage and its unbalanced nature.

Editor Nancy Conway feels that the Tribune “tries to tell the whole story.” Conway and other staff at the paper felt that the Latino community was much too divided.

The response from the audience was that as a community they had more in common than different and that they could be brought together by the paper. Many in the crowd also called for a Latino columnist and the Tribune said it would comply with this request.

The Salt Lake City area has many unique challenges facing the Latino community there. The paper has acknowledged this and is very enthusiastic about moving forward with the Parity Project and recommendations NAHJ will offer on helping it to hire more Latinos.

Conway stated, “We (The Salt Lake Tribune) are doing this in earnest, we are making every effort, that’s why we are doing this.”

Carlos Linares responded, “You have invited some of the most powerful people in the community and we will be watching your progress.”

According to Pam Perlich, senior research economist for the Bureau of Economic and Business Research at the University of Utah, Latinos make up 10.6% of state’s population.

She says Salt Lake County is home to more than half of the state’s Latino residents. The Latino population there has more than doubled from 1990 to 2000, skyrocketing by 138% throughout Utah and exploding by 145% for Salt Lake County.

The Salt Lake Tribune is owned by the Denver-based MediaNews Group, Inc. and has a daily circulation of about 130,000. It is the 23rd partner in NAHJ’s Parity Project and is one of 19 newspapers involved in this program. The Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation is a major funder of NAHJ’s Parity Project.

NAHJ’s goal is to have the Parity Project serve as a model for the entire journalism industry when it comes to bringing more diversity to newsrooms and to news coverage.