By VIRGINIA TORRES
The UNITY News

Two years ago, journalism and Chicano studies professors at California State University in Northridge united for a new venture: create a Spanish-journalism program and publish a Spanish-language campus newspaper.

Their Latino students who had grown up speaking Spanish wanted to tell stories about their communities in their first language. They felt more comfortable writing in Spanish than in English. But their writing skills needed to be sharpened.

Similar programs have sprung up in response to student demand at a handful of universities across the country, including the University of Miami, the City University of New York, and the University of Texas at El Paso.

But now these experiments are struggling to survive. The programs have little funding from their universities to publish Spanish-language papers. Students are finding it hard to get jobs. Mainstream newsroom cutbacks also have limited hiring by cutting Spanish-language editions of their papers.

And worse, some say employers continue to question the training of these journalists.

“Nobody thinks Spanish-language media can do good journalism,” said Jose Luis Benavides, assistant journalism professor at Cal State Northridge and head of its Spanish-language program. “People in the newsroom will question the student’s news judgment or objectivity if they cover certain topics, certain people or use certain sources.”

Alonso Yañez, editor-in-chief of El Nuevo Sol at Cal State Northridge, said the El Nuevo Sol editor he worked with as a reporter was “a good writer and a good reporter.”

“She’s been applying since last fall and hasn’t gotten a job,” he said. “It’s a little bit frustrating if someone like her cannot get a job. What chances do I have?”

The goal of the interdisciplinary program, Benavides said, is to teach traditional journalism values and tenets along with the language and cultures of Spanish-speaking communities for more accurate and fair coverage.

Students at Cal State Northridge, located in the San Fernando Valley within the city limits of Los Angeles, can only minor in Spanish-language journalism. Benavides hopes to develop it into a full-blown major in future years if enrollment continues to grow. Already, enrollment in the program has jumped from just a handful of students in 2006 to 35 today.

Students in the program must take Spanish-language media writing and write for El Nuevo Sol, the Spanish-language student newspaper published two or three times a semester. Still developing and maintaining the program continues to be a struggle for students and professors.

“The program is still small and in progress,” said Yañez, who graduates this fall. “I don’t know how many students will continue to take the minor and continue with what we are doing.”

The first Spanish-language journalism program was developed 15 years ago at Florida International University in Miami. That program originally began offering a master’s degree to train journalists who worked for Spanish publications in Latin America. Now, the 25-student program includes Spanish-speakers from the U.S., as well as Latin America.

“At the beginning, the struggle was convincing the university that ‘Yes, there are people who want to write in Spanish!’ ” said Lilliam Martinez-Bustos, coordinator of the Spanish-language master’s program.

Today, she said, the challenge is finding bicultural, bilingual professors who can give students diverse perspectives. The professors that teach in Spanish for the master’s courses also teach in English for undergraduates. The program’s goal is to help students gain experience in Spanish-language media and find their first jobs, she said.

Such jobs are becoming increasingly hard to come by.

“Today, the demand for Spanish-writing journalists is decreasing,” said Wilfredo Cancio Isla, assistant city editor for El Nuevo Herald, the Spanish edition of the Miami Herald that started in 1987 and has recently gone through a round of layoffs. “If the market is down, there is no room for growth.”

topic: Industry Issues
tags: education, spanish journalism, Spanish language, spanish-language media, spanish-language newspaper

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