Contacts:
Rebecca Baker, SPJ National President, 203-640-3904, rbaker@spj.org
Jennifer Royer, SPJ Director of Communications and Marketing, 317-361-4134, jroyer@spj.org

INDIANAPOLIS – The Society of Professional Journalists training program, in association with Google News Initiative, is now available to Spanish-language newsrooms and conferences. Jorge Luis Sierra is the first Spanish-language trainer who has been added to the SPJ Trainer Network.

"The Latino journalists working for Spanish-language media in the U.S. will be crucial to inform the Hispanic community with professional and quality journalism,” Sierra said. “This is why providing them access to the Google News Initiative tools and training them on how to use those tools is so important at this moment when disinformation, uncertainty and attacks to freedom of expression are taking place.”

The SPJ Training Program involves SPJ members, who have been trained by Google News Initiative staff, visiting newsrooms, classrooms, conferences and organizations to conduct trainings for improving digital storytelling. The free training workshops provide an overview of Google tools and focus on important areas in journalism such as multimedia storytelling, verification, data journalism and safety and security.

Google News Lab Training and Development Manager Nicholas Whitaker said, “While the Google News Initiative has self-paced training available on our site, and provides webinars and other distance learning options for newsrooms, in-person training will always be the most impactful mode of instruction. We can’t be everywhere all of the time, and want to collaborate with leaders in the field to provide the best service to the journalism industry. That’s why we’re excited to renew the successful training partnership with SPJ, to reach even more journalists wanting digital tools training with SPJ’s cohort of hand-picked trainers from across the country.”

This is the third year of the partnership between SPJ and the Google News Initiative. Since the program's inception, SPJ trainers have trained more than 16,000 journalists in 47 states at over 400 locations in the continental United States and Canada.

“The success of our partnership with Google News Initiative has exceeded our expectations,” SPJ National President Rebecca Baker said. “Thousands of journalists across the country and in Canada are getting valuable lessons in cutting-edge newsgathering that benefits the public by allowing for more robust storytelling. We couldn’t be happier.”

If you are interested in learning more or scheduling a training, visit spj.org/google. For Spanish-language training, visit spj.org/google-esp.

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