Hernandez – Director of Reporting & Minority Editorial Training Program @ Tribune Publishing.

Tribune Publishing, a unit of Tribune Company announced that Efrain Hernandez Jr. has been named to direct the reporting arm of METPRO, the company’s two-year program designed to prepare African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans and
Native Americans with limited journalism experience for full-time reporting/editing positions at one of Tribune’s 12 daily newspapers. METPRO (Minority Editorial Training Program) has two tracks, one for copy editors at Long Island-based Newsday and the other for reporters at the Los Angeles Times. Hernandez will oversee the Los Angeles training.

“Efrain brings all the right qualifications to run METPRO/reporting,” said Howard Tyner, Tribune Publishing vice president/editorial. “Since joining the Times in 1994 he has been involved with METPRO both as an editor and as a
member of the selection committee. Such lengthy experience will be invaluable as METPRO expands and evolves to address Tribune Publishing’s growing newsroom diversity needs.”

“I’m proud to be the new director,” Hernandez said. “METPRO is known nationally as a top-notch journalism training program. It has done an excellent job of developing journalists of varied backgrounds whereas the industry in general has not done enough.”

Hernandez has been an assistant metropolitan editor at the Los Angeles Times since 1998. He succeeds Richard Kipling, who became editor of the Times’ Orange County edition in August after 10 successful years running METPRO in Los Angeles.