NLP hires new NYC coordinator

A former NLP journalist fellow, Reyes succeeds Elis Estrada, who has moved to the Washington, D.C., area to become that region’s program manager.

“We are delighted to welcome Damaso to the NLP staff,” said NLP President Alan Miller. “His impressive skills as a multimedia journalist, experience as an NLP journalist fellow and commitment to our mission make him an ideal fit.”

Reyes is a gifted storyteller whose reporting has appeared over the past 15 years on print, photo, video and audio platforms. Among the publications for which he has written are The New York Times, Time Asia, DerSpiegel and The Root.

He also has excelled as a volunteer in NLP’s New York classrooms, both in person and remotely from Barcelona, Spain, where he lived for the past five years. A Brooklyn native, Reyes is deeply committed to NLP’s mission.

“I am very excited to join the staff of the News Literacy Project after three years of serving as a volunteer,” Reyes said. “From the start I was attracted to NLP’s mission of educating a new generation of news consumers, and the opportunity to work with the organization’s amazing staff, board and advisers will allow me to put my more than 15 years of experience as a journalist to good use.

“Being able to give schoolchildren in New York City the tools they need to be better-informed citizens is a special honor, because we live in a time when understanding the difference between accurately reported news and propaganda is more important than ever.”

Reyes is active in the National Association of Black Journalists and will represent NLP at the joint conference of NABJ and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists in Washington in late July.

He also has development experience, funding a long-term multimedia project that explores recent European immigration with grants he won from the Ford Foundation and the Fulbright Scholar Program.

Reyes, Miller said, “will make an already strong team that much better.”