The next extinct species: the Latino journalist

"600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda"

UNITY 08, the quadrennial gathering of the National Associations of Asian American, Black, Native American and Hispanic journalists, hits Chicago this week surrounded by wall-to-wall bad news about minorities and the media.

Never mind that the headline duo of McCain-Obama let the UNITY planners down by flaking out of the main-draw debate because of international travel schedules – Obama eventually decided to make nice by dropping by Sunday morning – it’s a shock there are enough employed journalists of color left to even have a convention!

Hardly a day passes when you don’t hear about some major newsroom losing hundreds of journalists due to a newspaper industry collapse resulting from advertisers spending what little money they have on the internet and not on the dead trees that consumers under 35 shun like the plague.

What you don’t hear about is that the hard-fought gains in newsroom diversity that were made throughout the last three decades are being flushed down the toilet by the common "last-in, first-out" practices. "Seniority policies" are shutting what few journalists of color there are out of major American newsrooms, I was one of them.

In January of this year when the Chicago Sun-Times let go dozens of journalists, I made headlines (visit my Press Room and read from the bottom up) by being let go even though I was Chicago’s only Hispanic metro columnist and the newsroom’s only Latino reporter. With no seniority on a roster that included people who had been there for over twenty years, I was out on my can despite the fact there are 1.7 million Latinos in the six-county Chicago metro region and the number grows every day.

You’d think the same editors and station managers who complain they can’t get new audiences would add Hispanic journalists to their line-ups. But no, they’re usually the first to go. Just in the last six months Chicago’s CBS affiliate WBBM-Channel 2 lost Antonio Mora – its’ first Latino anchor – and let go Rafael Romo, a Latino TV reporter. The Chicago Sun-Times waved bye-bye to me and Guillermo Munroe, a gifted artist who was the staff illustrator. Chicago Tribune Managing Editor George DeLama just stepped down after having ushered in an era of rich diversity in the paper’s pages that took it from being a singularly white paper to offering in-depth coverage of all of Chicago’s multi-colored communities. The Trib is back to having no Hispanic leadership.

Even two years ago things weren’t looking so great, a report from the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) found the percentage of Hispanic journalists employed in the nation’s English-language newsrooms declined slightly in 2006 from the year before for the first time in 29 years that ASNE had been keeping track. Way back then – when things were much rosier – the expected date for American newsrooms to reflect the U.S population was 2025. I’m guessing today it’s looking like 2080, not that any major media outlets are taking notice.

Brandon A. Benavides, Region 6 Director of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and News Producer for KSTP-TV/5 Eyewitness News in Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN has been keeping NAHJ members informed of the carnage with seemingly daily emails detailing the fallen.

"Nearly a dozen NAHJ members were laid off this year," Benavides told me in an email last week. "The layoffs affected print and broadcast journalists just entering the field and veterans. This is devastating news as a journalist of color."

Gary Pina, a 52-year-old page designer with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram with 23 years in the biz had his position eliminated last month. He told me, "I was shocked when I was told I was being laid off. I didn't think it would happen to me. On our design desk, there's four or five of us over 50, and I'm the youngest. I was also the only Hispanic on the design desk. ... I was expecting to receive an envelope with the buyout option like everybody else, but instead, I got a bigger envelope telling me my position was eliminated. I couldn't believe it. I've seen two young Hispanics, both in their early 20s, lose their jobs because of the last in-first out concept."

He’s not mad or bitter. But like me – and like all people of color who are concerned that negative or limited portrayal of minorities in the media feed racial stereotypes such as reported in a recent University of Illinois study – he worries about what this means for America’s view of the society we live in.

"At the moment, I think diversity has been thrown out the window in newsrooms across the country. This is now a business, and the company has to make money. I've been told that the Star-Telegram makes money, and is one of the top producers in the McClatchy chain, but apparently we aren't making enough.  I only hope that they consider keeping as diverse staff as possible when they are making their cuts."

"News is news," Gary continued, "our stories will be told if it's newsworthy, and if there's space to do it. The stories will likely be shorter, and probably won't appear as often as they should. And they may not be told by Hispanic reporters."

I’m not as optimistic as Gary. Those are too many "ifs" for the fastest growing segment of the population – and the rest of the people who live alongside them.

Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not necessarily reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact

eejaycee@600words.com

Comments

[George]

ya know, you could start a bi-lingual weekly.

[Jack Spatafora]

Esther, you're a regrattable example of this cut-and-run practice in the media. You better than most understand that as the Hispanic population continues to grow, it needs more than waiters and baseball players to speak for it....!!!