Quick note: I’m off next week and there will be no Local Edition in your inbox. See you on the 16th!
Last year, I wrote about a project from the Los Angeles Times that brought an in-person experience online. That newsroom’s digital Día de Muertos altar was a big hit with readers, and this year, they brought it back. You can read about it, and what they added, over at Poynter.
That project was born in a Slack channel for Latino employees at the Times and came out of an authentic connection to Los Angeles communities.
I asked two of the people behind it what advice they have for people who might be the only ones in their newsroom.
“I feel like Latinos know what stories matter to our community,” said Martina Ibáñez-Baldor, deputy design director. The trick is getting buy-in from the newsroom. “If you're the only one in your newsroom, my advice would be work on those projects and ask for forgiveness and not permission.”
The team behind the altar is privileged because they don’t have to justify projects such as the digital altar, said Fidel Martinez, the Times’ editorial director for Latino initiatives.
If you’re not lucky to have that institutional support, “trust your gut,” he said.
Last year’s altar was kind of DIY, they just figured it out and made it happen, and people saw value to it, Martinez said.
“I would encourage the same approach.”
You can read more about the project here.
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