Less than half the number of people who attended the 2006 NAHJ Convention preregistered for this year’s event in Puerto Rico.

NAHJ board members and staff prepare convention bags yesterday the Puerto Rico Convention Center. Latino Reporter/Daniel Belis

By Jessica Conner
Latino Reporter

This year’s National Association of Hispanic Journalists Convention is facing far fewer attendees and recruiters than ever in the wake of a recession and subsequent cutbacks and layoffs.

A little more than 700 people were registered to attend the three-day convention in Puerto Rico as of noon Tuesday, almost half the number that attended the 2006 conference in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

In past years, at least 90 recruiters have been on hand. This year, less than 60 plan to be at the conference’s Career Expo, NAHJ executive assistant Yaneth Guillen said.

“The economy is a big issue,” NAHJ officer Brandon Benavides said. ” A lot of members have been laid off.”

This year, NAHJ paid the registration, airfare and hotel costs or for more than 70 journalists who recently lost their jobs.

But Benavides said other people who still have jobs aren’t coming because their companies can’t afford to send them. Several hundred journalists said they couldn’t even afford to renew their memberships, he said.

Financial hardship is also a problem for some news organizations. For example, instead of hosting several booths during the career expo, NBC plans to share a booth with sister network Telemundo. And NBC will no longer co-sponsor the conference like it once did.

But NAHJ received more than $100,000 in sponsorships in order to keep registration costs down and sponsor journalists. Continental Airlines flew more than 50 journalism students and their mentors, professional journalists, to San Juan for the Student Campus and student projects.

In order to attract more attendees, the organization extended its early bird registration special, nixed its annual golf tournament and restricted its activities to the convention center and main hotel, the Caribe Hilton.

In light of the economic challenges, NAHJ is focusing more on skills-building workshops that journalists need to stay relevant in the industry.

“This year, it is all about training,” Ivan Roman, the organization’s executive director, said.

NAHJ is offering the first-ever “CyberLab,” with multimedia workshops at the convention center Thursday and Friday. Seasoned journalists will teach everything from how to blog and post on Twitter to how to podcast and produce audio slideshows. Other workshops will provide multiplatform training in Final Cut, audio storytelling, photography and interviewing techniques.

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