A toolkit for Latina journalists and training sessions to reduce the pay gap

Discrimination against Latino journalists in the United States affects the environment of freedom of expression and access to information for the Hispanic communities they frequently report on and write about. This is the main conclusion of the research conducted by Fundamedios in our RJI Fellowship.

Here is the final report with the consolidated information from our efforts. This report focuses more on the overall facts than on individual cases documented during our research and shared in past posts during this fellowship:

The most common claims documented during eight months of research involved inferior working conditions and inequitable salaries for Latino journalists. Essentially, Latino journalists say they do the same job as their white peers with fewer resources, and less pay. In additiona, the intersectionality of race and gender results in cumulative discrimination against female journalists who are of Latino origin, who earn on average 37% less than their white male peers.

To address this issue, Fundamedios created a toolkit to address these issues by training journalists to improve their negotiation skills.

You can take a look at Pay Gap Toolkit

The toolkit is located on Fundamedios’ website where we will also promote partnerships with other institutions to increase its use and reach. It is for bilingual journalists and highlights typical phrases in Spanish and or Spanglish. 

The first section teaches readers the fundamental facts about Latina journalists in the U.S. media environment. Then we talk about fundamental rights and the value of the Latino identity in a growing market.  Next are the essential tasks to perform before applying for a job and preparing to address discrimination and the pay gap. 

We explain how to prepare a value statement and express it using the STAR technique, role playing a specific situation where a job candidate can solve a task by strategically preparing planned actions to obtain the desired results. Negotiation skills are taught through summarized clips from human resources experts as well as veteran Latina journalists.

We will be teaching these skills through the National Association of Hispanic Journalists platform. The first of three training sessions for its members was held on February 18. The next two will be March 24 and April 22. 

Any organization interested in partnering or using these materials, please feel free to contact me at dthiel@fundamedios.org