NATION AL ASSOCIATION OF HISPANIC JOURNALISTS

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By Frenchie Robles

The Miami Herald

When NAHJ Executive Director Ivan Romanasked Nancy SanMartin and me to be theprogramming chairs for this year’sconvention in San Juan, PuertoRico, our answer was simple: It’stime for a shake-up.Many of us had grownaccustomed to NAHJ’s tried-and-true panels on important issues inboth our community and theindustry, such as immigration,Cuba, and climbing the corporateladder when you don’t quite lookor talk like everyone else.But this year had to be different.This time, the workshops I spentmonths planning in years pastseemed, well, irrelevant.With journalism sufferingunprecedented job losses, and anindustry that seems to becollapsing around us, we wantedthe 2009 convention to be the oneyou can’t afford to miss. Weslashed away at super sessionsand plenaries to make room for what we all need in thesechanging times: new skills.“We’ve kind of blown up themodel,’’ said online track co-leader Robert Hernandez, director of development at the Seattle Times.“This convention is much morereflective of the time. It reflectswhat we are in the middle of andreally responds to what the needsare.’’

See NAHJ on Page 7

Broadcast students, including Karla Lara (in yellow) and Paloma Veloz(sitting), work on a standup shot at the NAHJ Convention in San Jose in 2007.More on this year’s student projects on Page 3.

NOTICIAS

Latino journalists produce ﬁrst interactive town hall in San Antonio.

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Convention is ‘can’t miss’ opportunity

INSIDE

•Ricardo Pimentel:Conventiondesigned for you•Newspapersgetting creative•Esther J. Cepeda:Nine reasons togo to San Juan

27TH ANNUAL NAHJ CONVENTION | SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO | JUNE 24

27, 2009

Early

bird rateextendedto May 15

The early bird registration cost for the 27th AnnualNAHJ Convention and Media & Career Expo in SanJuan, Puerto Rico, has been extended until May 15.This year’s convention, June 24-27, will offer themost multimedia journalismtraining you can get infour days under one roof.Half the total convention training and workshoptime — 33 sessions — are dedicated to non-stoptraining in online journalism skills, analysis of our changing news industry and how you move forwardin this new media landscape.Members can save $70 and non-members cansave $105 if they act now.Also, the rate at the Caribe Hilton, the convention

See Discounts on Page 7

NATION AL ASSOCIATION OF HISPANIC JOURNALISTS

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Let me guess what you’re thinking about theupcoming NAHJ conference in San Juan, Puerto RicoJune 24-27.I’ve got a job, but the company isn’tpaying for anyone to travel anywhereand things are so uncertain. I’m not sureif I should spend any money to go.Or I’ve just lost my job, I, for sure, can’tafford to go.Actually, this is more than a guess. I’veheard from a number of you already. Letme suggest that in either case – you losta job or are fearful of losing one – youneed to go to this conference.Here’s why: This convention, more than any NAHJconference in the past, is designed to help you hone theskills you need to keep your job or to find a new one.“Evolve, Embrace, Reinvent.” That’s the convention’stheme. They are more than words. They are the guidingforce behind how we’ve programmed this gathering.Nearly half of all the sessions at the convention will bemultimedia skills training or multimedia related. You willnot likely find this concentration of training available atone time for journalists again anytime soon.We’ve prided ourselves on our conventions’ trainingcomponents over the years. But this year’s emphasison real-world, multimedia training surpasses what we’vedone before. The 2009 multimedia sessions will benearly three times the number we had at our conventionin San Jose in 2007.We do not have blinders on here at NAHJ. We knowthat newsrooms are forgoing travel that, in more flushdays, might have been considered “necessary.” Weknow that being jobless or being fearful of losing a jobwill inhibit even longtime, loyal NAHJ members fromattending. But the point we’re making with thisconvention is that we know all that and it’s why thisconvention is all about helping you get the training youneed.But Puerto Rico is so far, some are also thinking. But,actually, getting to Puerto Rico is no more expensivethan getting to many U.S. cities.Your company can’t pay your way?OK, see if they can at least give you the time off without making you dip into your vacation time. Hotelrates too high? We’ve negotiated further discountedrates.Let your editors and publishers know that multimediatraining is what NAHJ’s 2009 convention will besubstantially about. And tell them that what they’ll get inreturn if you go as a trained (and professionallyrefreshed) journalist. A bargain.

Ricardo Pimentel, editorial page editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, can be reached at rpimentel@journalsentinel.com

This NAHJ convention designed to help you

RicardoPimentelNAHJPresident

More hands

on training o

ered to help journalists

By Robert Hernandez

Seattle Times

As it did with the student projectsmore than 20 years ago, NAHJ isagain setting the new standard for how skills-training is being offered atconventions.The New Media track’s hands-onsessions that began in FortLauderdale, and have influencedother conventions, have literallymore than doubled this year for thePuerto Rico convention.Track coordinators HiramEnriquez, Joe Ruiz and RobertHernandez have planned a series of workshops that will give you theskills to help you navigate the seachange we are facing in theindustry.“We have in-depth sessions onmany topics that are really importantfor journalists trying to reinventthemselves for the digital media, butyou don’t have to be intimidated if there are things that you don’tunderstand,” Enriquez said. “Wealso have a few sessions that willcover the basics so that anyone canget up to speed before they ventureinto a more specialized session or workshop.”Thanks to NAHJ’s commitment toserving its members, we have tworooms solely dedicated to thesehands-on workshops.Nearly every 90 minutes there willbe two sessions offering attendeesexposure to new technologies suchas

Twitter, Skype, PhotoSynth

andmore. Many will be offered atmultiple times, like a movie theater with multiple show times."We're excited to teach thesecourses and organize the panels,”said Ruiz. “The people we'vesecured truly care about the industryas a whole and those who've beenaffected. We want this convention tobe worth it for everybody whowishes to take part.”Of course, we’re still offering thesame popular sessions from FortLauderdale like multimediastorytelling in Flash."We want people to feel like thisconvention will be worth their time,effort and financial consideration for their future," Ruiz said.

Robert Hernandez can be reached at rhernandez@seattletimes.com

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By Mekahlo Medina

NBC Los Angeles

Forget television news as weknow it. For get the daily printednewspaper, the 60-minute radionews program, and the infrequentlyupdated online site.This summer in San Juan,Puerto Rico, 40 students and 30professional mentors will transformthe way the news industry “was”into what it can be -- a multimedia,one-stop source for news, andinformation where a journalist'shard and creative work on “thestory” is easily distributed throughmultiple platforms.NAHJ has expanded itscommitment to the next generationof journalists by “looking forward”through student projects that arebuilt around the current and futureways of how journalism isconsumed.“Unlike legacy media outletsmany of us work for, we as anorganization have the unique luxuryof being able to scrap what we'vedone in the past and start fresh,”said Mekahlo Medina, deputyproject director.Over the last 20 years, NAHJ hassponsored many student projectslimited to one journalistic field: print,radio, television or online. Studentswere paired with working journalistswho mentored them in their specialized field.In 2007, the projects were placedunder the umbrella of a“convergence” project. For the firsttime, all of the specialized tracksworked in the same room andcommunicated about storycoverage.In 2008, the Unity Journalists of Color conference took convergenceto a new level. Students were notonly put under the same roof, butorganizers attempted to cross-assign stories and platforms with aprimary focus on the online product.This year in San Juan, we haveeliminated tracks all together.Students will be multimedia contentproviders, who for the most partalready produce content on multipleplatforms at their universities.During the projects, they mightproduce a video story about onetopic and an article on the sametopic. Both elements will primarily bedestined for the Web site. The videoalso may be used in NAHJ's long-running El Noticiero newsmagazineshow. The article also might be usedin NAHJ's long-published LatinoReporter print edition. Though theselegacy products will continue, their production will be reduced as theprimary focus becomes the Website.“It's no surprise that more andmore content is being consumedonline, and on mobile devices. If anystudent walked into a television or newspaper newsroom today, theywill face an organization strugglingwith effectively producing content for these new ways of consumption,”Medina said.“We want to give them a leg up,take away the focus of ‘legacy’production, and give them anewsroom that is focused on the‘new ways’ of consumption. Thefocus will always be journalism --always the story -- but they will learnthe experience of delivering journalism through variousvehicles."The Web site will be the contenthub, and the place to connectsocially and through mobile devices.It is on the Web site that consumerswill get live developments on our host city, the conference, and itsparticipants.Through the Web site, memberswill be able to read, view, and hear content created by our multimediastudent journalists.They also will be able to follow liveconference events through Twitter,live cameras and live blogging. Theproject hopes members willparticipate by sending in phonevideo reviews of panels, pictures of events, or their own reports of conference events.“It’s a unique, and innovativeexperiment. An experiment our entire industry is facing or will facesoon. We, as NAHJ mentors, manyof whom are former students, arecommitted to making it work,”Medina said.

Mekahlo Medina is NAHJ deputy director of student projects.

Student Danny Rodriguez gets help from a mentor during the NAHJConvention in San Jose in 2007.