Debate Over Covering 'Hispanic America' Continues

By: Allan Richards In his response last week, in this Shoptalk space, to my Feb. 28 column, ?How to Cover Hispanic America?and Why,? David Paulin takes issue with my contention that the nation?s newsrooms need to hire more Hispanic reporters to cover the burgeoning Hispanic population. He questions whether there is a color and culture barrier in 2006 and describes some of Miami?s Hispanics as ?having grown up in an insular Hispanic environment? and lacking the confidence to ?go out and interact with milieus and cultures other than their own.?

Let me offer some comments from editors and journalists of newspapers around the country about the emerging Hispanic communities and the need to develop newsrooms that can relate and report on them better.

An article by Aly Colon of the Poynter Institute (posted on PoynterOnline Feb. 27, 2006) profiled the National Association Hispanic Journalism?s (NAHJ) Parity Project, which was created to reduce the gap between the emerging Hispanic communities around the country and the lack of Hispanics in the newsroom. In it, Janet Weaver, the executive editor and vice president of the Tampa Tribune, not only admits that the Tribune has been a very white, Anglo newsroom, but that it has not always reflected Tampa?s longtime Hispanic population or the recent influx of Hispanics into the community. Weaver says that the NAHJ is now helping the newspaper ?build more awareness for coverage and hiring.?

In the same article, John Temple, publisher, editor and president of the Rocky Mountain News says that his newspaper needed to ?improve the accuracy of the Rocky Mountain News? coverage of its rapidly growing Hispanic community and to diversify the staff.? The newspaper now has a Hispanic advisory committee and more bilingual reporters. ?Now we have a better feel and connection to (our Hispanic community). And Hispanic leaders have a feeling the paper is listening,? Temple said.

And Cristina De Leon-Menjivar, a bilingual education reporter, describes the impact of being the first woman Hispanic reporter hired by the Napa Valley Register in Napa, California. ?The previous reporter couldn?t tap into half the community . . . the editor was excited because he wanted the paper to represent everybody, not just Anglos,? De Leon-Menjivar said.

As I wrote in my article, part of my perspective is borne out of my work with recruiters, editors and news directors from many media outlets. Gannett, Knight Ridder, Scripps Howard, Cox newspapers, CNN, and AP now regularly visit our campus in N. Miami to discuss the changing demographics of their markets, some of the issues of emerging ethnic communities, and to interview many of our young Hispanic journalism students.

Their goal in hiring young Hispanics is to do exactly what the editors said in Colon?s article: to help develop a better awareness of their Hispanic communities, to deepen their sensitivity to Hispanic-related issues so that they can improve coverage of these issues, and to better reflect their readership.

I would qualify this by saying that I frequently sit in as recruiters and editors from some of the above mentioned media outlets interview our students?they vet them intensely, and I think fairly, and having a last name like Garcia or Rodriquez does not give students a free pass to the dance. Media outlets often run national searches for young journalists. They seek the best and brightest, and while I have seen our Hispanic students land internships or jobs at papers like the Washington Post, AP and the New York Times, I have seen many turned away.

Those who get hired do so on merit. Period.

I do agree with David Paulin?s comment that a middle-aged, white guy can write about the Hispanic culture, or other minorities, with sensitivity. A journalist is challenged to cross many lines, including the culture line. But I didn?t only suggest hiring more Hispanic reporters. I did recommend that newspapers with emerging Hispanic communities initiate outreach to leaders of their respective Hispanic population . . . and re-train and sensitize reporters and editors to relate better to their particular Hispanic community, as well as hire Hispanic reporters.

As for the comment that some Miami Hispanics might have neither the confidence--nor the language skills--to move beyond ?an insular Hispanic environment,? that might be true for some. My observation is that the Hispanic family is tightly-knit and that some of my students? parents prefer that their children not roam too far from home?too far from home even being the next county north.

But I increasingly see that the generation of Hispanics born in America share in the dominant culture?s mobility. They possess the intellectual curiosity, the hunger for the truth, the interviewing and research abilities and, yes, the language skills to be a writer.

As I wrote, six of our students?all Hispanic--shared in eight Pulitzer Prizes while writing, in English, for the Miami Herald. They won that for their diligence and their way with the written word.

Finally, I find it ironic that Mr. Paulin opens his retort to my article by announcing that he admired certain writers when he was a youth for their commitment to fighting social inequities. Some of his heroes were middle-aged, white guys who dashed across the culture line and wrote brilliantly. And yet Mr. Paulin seems to strenuously object to the notion that Hispanics are underrepresented, at 4.3% of the total full-time employment at daily English-language newspapers across the U.S. The social inequity he now seems to argue for is that the current number of Hispanic reporters, and any enlargement of those numbers, will come at the expense of this generation of middle-aged, white guys--guys like me, and presumably him.

With 14% of the U.S. population already Hispanic and that number expected to swell to 21% by 2020, media outlets know two things: that the emerging Hispanic communities need wider representation in newsrooms, not less and that an emerging community delivers readers, much needed readers. In the two weeks since my article appeared, three more of my Hispanic journalism students found work at newspapers owned by major chains. I don?t think this trend is going to stop very soon.