Fewer sponsors, exhibitors create financial crunch for NAHJ as media industry contracts
The budget cuts forcing contractions and layoffs in the journalism industry are leaving a mark on the National Association of Hispanic Journalists’ annual conference as sponsors and exhibitors who once spent big are now absent from the event.
The 2026 gathering in New Orleans is projected to make $300,000 less than last year’s Chicago conference, much of it due to a shrinking pool of corporate revenue.
Sponsorships remain one of the organization’s main sources of funding, generating more than $1 million in 2022, according to the most recent publicly available financial audit. The revenue helps fund the annual convention and supports NAHJ’s year-round programs.
“It’s still one of our main pillars,” said Carlos Rodríguez, financial officer of the NAHJ Board of Directors. “But the media industry has changed, and some companies are no longer able to support us at the same level they have in the past.”
Sponsors for this year are in flux. Several high profile publications including the Washington Post and the Associated Press did not attend the event. CNN hosted a booth at the expo this year while they did not last year.
NAHJ Executive Director Yaneth Guillén-Diaz acknowledged that keeping corporate sponsorships has become more challenging for NAHJ as the media industry faces layoffs, budget cuts and financial uncertainty.
But the organization is financially healthy, she said.
This year’s conference is projected to make $1,277,310. The organization has cut roughly $185,510 in expenses that “won’t affect people” for things like food and venue spaces, she added.
NAHJ won’t know if it met its intended revenue goals until it can conduct a comprehensive review of conference expenses and revenue, Guillén-Diaz said.
Last year’s conference in Chicago made $1.8 million of its originally projected $2 million in total revenue, according to financial records provided by NAHJ’s national financial officer, Carlos Rodriguez. The conference also operated on a $200,000 operating surplus for that year.
Registration is at an “average level” with roughly 1,400 attendees as of Saturday for this year’s conference, Guillén-Diaz said. She does not know the number of canceled reservations.
But NAHJ Wisconsin president Ricardo Torres expressed concern about the financial burden that attendees face at the NAHJ board of directors during a membership meeting on Saturday.
Early-bird registration for a professional member cost $325 this year.
Torres, a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter, said in an interview that he spent $1,300 on a five-night stay in a queen room at the New Orleans Marriott.
Such costs are prohibitive for many of the organization’s members, he said, and prevent more people from attending the conference.
“We always look at the best interest of the members,” NAHJ president Dunia Elvir responded. She stated that the organization looks to make the most cost effective decisions for members when choosing host cities and hotels.
According to board leadership, choosing a location for the yearly conference takes roughly three years of planning and organization. Elvir said during the press conference that “at the end of the day” the organization is trying its best to provide the services that its membership needs to succeed.
“Newsrooms are pulling back on reporters from going to these kinds of things so it’s a financial burden on attendees,” he said.
Ivan Saravia is a fifth-year student at Laney College in Oakland, California. Ivan served as co-editor in chief at The Peralta Citizen, where he covered local government and authored enterprise and investigative. He aspires to be an investigative reporter in the Bay Area, his hometown. Reach out to him at saraviaivan2005 [at] gmail [dot] com.
