The Latino Media Resource Guide has an exciting new webpage!

The 5th Latino Media Resource Guide is now completely online, easily searchable, and browsable by category.

Visit it now at: lmrg.nalip.org

The Latino Media Resource Project

"Producers and networks have failed to fulfill their contractual good-faith obligation to hire more women and minority directors," said DGA president Michael Apted, who also chairs the guild's diversity task force. "For many years we have publicized the hiring records of the top 40 shows, challenging the industry to open up employment opportunities, but all too often the producers' and networks' commitment to diversity is simply not there," he added.

The WGA Hollywood Writer's Report, Whose Stories are we Telling," released last summer, revealed that minority writer/producer representation on television writing staffs had not much changed over the past 7 years, holding around 8-9% even as minorities swelled to make up 32-33% of the population. Latinos continue to train, intern and gain occasional inclusion on writing staffs but still appear in only 1-2% of the available positions. Roles for lead and recurring characters are being tallied for television; in film the Latino/a directors, writers and performers find great challenges in finding production opportunities, festival invitations and Latino executive advocates inside the system. Notwithstanding the Latino community's on-going advocacy efforts, studios, networks and other broadcasters continue to express reservations about the merit of Latino concerns.

The Latino Media Resource Project supports Latino film and television makers to bridge the divide that still exists in the media landscape: not only are the percentages of Latino/as employed as writers, directors, producers,
technicians and executives much lower than our proportion of the population, but there are plenty of trained and able Latino/Latino media makers who are not finding ready access to the opportunities which do exist for them.

In a Chicano Studies Research Center analysis of television roles 3 years ago, Chicano Studies Research Center director and NALIP Founding Board member Chon Noriega reported, "The good news has been the development of Latino-themed series at several networks since these series now account for almost one-third of Latino regular characters on prime-time television. But overall, Latinos are missing from 85 percent of television series. So if one of these Latino-themed series is cancelled, you see a big drop in numbers."

The NALIP Latino Media Resource Project produces a hard-copy publication, distributed free, plus a web-based database that provides a great service to the Latino media agenda as well as the media field, at large. We reach out into the national Latino media community and collect interactive and updatable data that furthers artistic work, plus increases Latino participation in the entertainment job market. In addition, the printed and on-line guides serve as valuable and requested resources to the mainstream film and television industries which seek to diversify their talent in front of and behind the camera so as to better reflect the demographic make-up of our nation.

NALIP's 2008 Latino Media Resource Guide includes:
• Funding opportunities and grant deadlines for documentary and indie projects
• Distribution and marketing contacts for independent features and documentaries
• Agency and guild information, plus other industry resources
• A comprehensive listing of individual Latino artists and craftspersons
• Latino production companies
• Latino vendors like sound stages, post-production houses and equipment rentals
• Credits on Hispanic films produced, distributed and broadcast plus an Ibero-American section online
• Film schools and graduate programs for student and aspiring film, television and documentary makers
• Diversity programs for entering the entertainment business

The Latino Media Resource Database is also at www.lmrg.nalip.org. It is an interactive, searchable web-based database that is accessible by media professionals, funders, researchers, students and teachers. It includes many of the elements of the Resource Guide and will initially be available free until it can become subscriber based. The interactive database is designed to integrate with NALIP's member database, so that updates and additions of elements like current resumes, cross-referenced c.v.'s, job postings, crew calls, project updates, etc. can be made both by the project managers and the database members. In 2008, we will launch social networking sections so that makers can have short films, video resume archives and collaborative pages.

Latinos in the Industry is NALIP's eNewsletter. It shares advocacy updates, news, job opportunities and celebrations to our 8,500+ subscribers twice each week. Our LMRP database manager then post deadlines and workshops on our intranet online calendar and archives the information for future reference.

The NALIP Latino Media Resource Project has many audiences. First, the 2500 Latino/Latina producers, directors, writers, technicians, scholars and new media artists listed in the Reference Guide. These are NALIP members plus the produced credits of makers from sister arts and media organizations. Distribution for the first two years has been free to all participants, as is interaction at the website.

The second initial audience is the wider media business including studios, funders, arts centers, Latino studies departments, agencies and guilds. In the production and distribution of the Guide, NALIP partners with the Hollywood Creative Directory, the best-known industry reference guide in the business. They help us get the Latino Media Resource Guide directly to the desks of studios, agencies, networks and production companies, sometimes along with their own book. We also provide this resource to media and education centers, university media programs, job fairs and film festivals in order to further extend information about Latino/Latina makers into the mainstream media market as well as to alternative funding centers.

The web gives us another layer of penetration and circulation for the Latino Media Resource Project, both to those on the newsletter and others that come into work with our data. The Latino Media Resource Project is the go-to place for information by and about Latino media makers. We are in the process of increasing the jobs and opportunities sections, including a video resume, and hope to include links and information to and from many sister organizations in order to expand our target audience much farther. We continue to address the divide between opportunities in the media landscape and the abilities for Latino/Latino media makers to access those opportunities, and increase their prominence in the media culture. With a viable reference guide and interactive web-based resource, the NALIP Latino Media Resource Project attempts to address the difficulties of our target audience and turn around the entertainment industry employment statistics so that Latino makers increase their prominence in the media culture.