La Prensa of Western Massachusetts was founded by Natalia Muñoz in 2007 to welcome diverse views in the Latino communities. Originally a print publication, Muñoz soon added a website and then ceased printing the paper.
Muñoz is also the founder and director of Verdant Multicultural Media, a communications and marketing company that connects institutions with communities of color. A believer in the power of innovation and pragmatism, Muñoz looks for new and meaningful ways to connect different communities.
She is an authority on Latino markets with more than 25 years of experience in the communications field. More information is available here.
Primarily a print journalist (reporter, columnist and editor) for English- and Spanish-speaking media outlets in the United States, Spain and Puerto Rico, she became a new media journalist at the turn of the millennium.
These include The Associated Press from Barcelona, Spain; Latina magazine and The New York Daily News; The Springfield Republican; El Vocero and The San Juan Star, both in Puerto Rico, for which, as managing editor, she created an award-winning Sunday arts, culture and politics magazine called Venue that drew some of island’s most distinguished writers such as Rosario Ferré, Enrique LaGuerre and Raquel Rivera.
She is co-producer of the award-winning documentary, “Vieques: Worth Every Bit of Struggle,” is a graphic artist who has produced brochures, posters, presentations and logos and edited and designed the book, “Jaime Benítez: Discursos,” a compilation of speeches by one of Puerto Rico’s foremost educators who served as chancellor and then president of the University of Puerto Rico (1942-1971) and as the island’s representative in the U.S. Congress (1972-1976).
In 2007, she was a producer of the photographic exhibit, “Nuestras Abuelas (Our Grandmothers)” which brought together stories of Chicana, Puerto Rican, Chilean and Guatemalan grandmothers and how they influenced their granddaughters.
She is an occasional contributor in Spanish for El Sol Latino and in English and Spanish for The New York Daily News and its Viva section.
Muñoz is a frequent speaker on cultural competence and media at area colleges from Western New England College in Springfield to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Recently, she presented a talk titled, “Engaging Diverse Communities” at the 2011 Transformational Leadership Conference at WNEC.
In 2005, The Republican nominated her for a Pulitzer Prize for stories that delved deeply into the lives of people who experience unimaginable harm. “Shattered Lives: Shooting Anniversary Bitter for Ex-police Officer and Convict,” focused on how both victim and victimizer are forever trapped in an instant of violence; “Mothers Weep As City Sleeps,” is an examination of the culture of violence that claimed 17 lives in 2004 in Springfield; and (in the poorly titled) “Illegal Struggle In America,” reported over many months looked at how one Guatemalan family lives in the United States without visas.
