The National Association of Hispanic Journalists, frustrated by lackluster coverage of the Latinx community in mainstream outlets, is taking matters into its own hands. The thirty-five-year-old organization recently launched palabra., a news site that will do what it says other outlets have failed to: treat Latinx communities as mainstream and not niche, and offer job opportunities in an increasingly stratified media industry.
“It’s by journalists of color and for communities of color,” says Ricardo Sandoval-Palos, the public editor at PBS and managing editor of the new outlet. “The goal is to be a platform for speaking to a community still on the fringes of mainstream news coverage.”
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For more than half a century, the number of Latinx and other people of color working in the American press—particularly in leadership positions—has remained essentially stagnant, never coming close to representing the racial diversity of the public it serves. And even when stories about the Latinx community are covered, harmful stereotypes, both overt and subtle, still crop up too often. palabra. intends to fill in the gaps—and offer job opportunities to the increasing number of NAHJ members who, whether by choice or not, are currently working as freelancers.
“The reality is that we are the mainstream. We are America now. But our industry does not reflect that,” says Sandoval-Palos, who has spent the bulk of his forty-year career in journalism as an investigative journalist.
palabra. will publish three digital “issues” before transitioning
Read more here: https://www.cjr.org/united_states_project/palabra-national-association-hispanic-journalists.php
