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Parity Project comes to the Ventura County Star

To help the newspaper become a better reflection of the community it serves, the parent company of the Ventura County Star became one of the first newspaper chains nationwide to partner with the National Association of Hispanic Journalists to launch the Parity Project.

The program seeks to increase the number of Latino and other multicultural candidates in the nation's newsrooms so they may more accurately reflect the population in their circulation area. The program also seeks to improve the newspaper's coverage of those under-represented segments of the community.

Steps the Star has taken include:

  • Aggressively recruiting, interviewing and hiring qualified multicultural job candidates to fill newsroom openings at the Star.


  • Conducting newspaper coverage surveys both in-house and in the community.


  • Holding community forums to get feedback on how we can improve coverage of those under-represented segments of the community.


  • Creating a joint newspaper/community diversity committee to find ways to help the newspaper improve its hiring, retention and promotion of diversity candidates, improve its coverage of those communities and identify community organizations who would benefit from the newspaper's sponsorship programs.

Some results already have been seen since the program was launched during the Spring of 2003.

The number of multicultural journalists in the newsroom at the Star rose from 11.8 percent in 2002 to 18.6 percent at the end of 2003, according to the recent American Society of Newspaper Editors annual newsroom survey.

The number of Latino and other multicultural guest columnists and letter-to-the-editor writers continues to grow.

The Star's Diversity Committee has met several times and has formulated some concrete suggestions to address employment, coverage and community outreach issues.

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