WASHINGTON - Pulitzer Newspapers, Inc. is the latest media company to become a partner in the National Association of Hispanic Journalists' (NAHJ) Parity Project. Three Pulitzer newspapers in California will take part in the Parity Project as NAHJ seeks to increase dramatically the number of Latinos in U.S. newsrooms. The Parity Project also calls for improving news coverage of the nation's Latino community.

The three Pulitzer newspapers that are the newest partners in NAHJ's Parity Project are: The Sentinel of Hanford, Calif.; the Napa Valley Register of Napa, Calif. and the Santa Maria Times of Santa Maria, Calif.

All three newspapers have been identified as news organizations that serve large Latino communities, but where Latinos remain underrepresented in those newsrooms.

In each of the above California cities, NAHJ will co-sponsor community forums with the management and news staffs of these organizations and Latino civic and social leaders. The community forums will bring together people who have a stake in seeing that coverage of Latinos is done in a fair and accurate manner. These representatives will be encouraged to work with each paper on a continuous basis to offer recommendations on what each can do to improve coverage of Latinos.

"We are thrilled about partnering with Pulitzer Newspapers," said NAHJ President Juan Gonzalez. "By agreeing to this partnership, Pulitzer is demonstrating that it wants to do more to improve its outreach to and coverage of the Latino community."

Pulitzer Newspapers, Inc. is a subsidiary of Pulitzer, Inc. Pulitzer, Inc.'s operations, through various subsidiaries and affiliated entities, include two major metropolitan dailies, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson, Ariz. The Pulitzer Newspapers, Inc. subsidiary includes 12 dailies and more than 65 weekly newspapers, shoppers and niche publications. Pulitzer Inc.'s newspaper operations also include the Suburban Journals of Greater St. Louis, a group of 38 weekly papers and various niche publications.

NAHJ's Parity Project is sponsored by the Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

NAHJ established the Parity Project as a way to bring about immediate results in diversifying America's newsrooms. A recent survey by the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) shows that Latinos make up only 4% of the news staff at English-language daily newspapers in U.S. But the latest census figures show that Latinos make up 13% of the overall U.S. population.

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