New Latino digital think tank combines academic research with journalism in new news site

LatinaLista — When working on a news story, it’s not unusual for reporters to go to their local universities and tap into the insights of professors on campus who are seen as experts on the topic. But what if that academic insight was already built into a site that provided the latest research, commentary and analysis with a focus on Latinos?

It would then be known as the newly launched Latino Information Network or LIN@R. Described as a “first-of-its-kind Latino-focused research center and digital think-tank,” the site, that has been two years in the making, is housed on the campus of Rutgers University.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Robert Montemayor serves as editor and director of the editorial initiative which is unique in that it is a member of the Inter-University Program for Latino Research (IUPLR), a consortium of 25 of the country’s leading Latino research institutes.

“The LIN@R concept is unique: an intersection between academic treatments and explanatory journalism,” wrote Montemayor in a welcome post on the site’s homepage. “The LIN@R website will be tasked with collecting information from a wide array of sources, including more than two dozen universities throughout the country that house Latinos research institutes, including the Smithsonian Latino center in Washington D.C. This cluster of research institutions represents several hundred of the leading Latino academics and minds in the country studying Latino-related issues of every kind.”

Covering a wide range of issues from science and technology to education and immigration, LIN@R is one more site that strives to not only be a reliable and credible source about Latinos but a site that adds scholarly texture to a national conversation threatened to be overrun by old stereotypes promoted by pundits and writers who don’t know Latinos.