U.S.–Mexico border becomes multimedia journalism classroom for Cal State University students reporting from both sides

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By Julio J. Bermejo
Dominic Torres wasn’t getting what he needed from the interview, and he knew it. Torres, a senior majoring in journalism at California State University, Fullerton, in Southern California, was on the outskirts of Tijuana, Baja California, in November at a residential shelter for child victims of sexual exploitation. He was there to interview “Lucy” (a pseudonym), a 21-year-old survivor of a childhood of abuse at the hands of her father. Her story was to be a central element of the multimedia news package on child sexual exploitation in the U.S.–Mexico border region Torres was assembling as part of his work in the university’s new course, “Specialized Reporting on Minorities of the Southern Border.” 

See the stories: California State University Fullerton Reports From The Border
Yet, even though Lucy had agreed to the interview through the shelter director, who sat translating between her and Torres, who did not speak Spanish; even though the camera was trained only on her hands; and even with the promised use of the pseudonym and an offer to alter her voice in the footage, Lucy was reluctant to offer any details of her story. Torres slowly switched off the camera and hung his head in thought.

12 professors heading to U.S, Mexico border for Dow Jones News Fund Multimedia Training Academy 2019

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Twelve journalism instructors from U.S. Hispanic Serving Institutions will travel to the U.S., Mexico border region to participate in the 10th annual Dow Jones News Fund Multimedia Training Academy May 31 – June 6 at the University of Texas in El Paso. Thanks to a grant provided by the Dow Jones News Fund, Borderzine organizes this annual training program geared to support multimedia journalism instructors who teach in institutions with a large minority population. Here is a list of the 12 instructors who were chosen and their institutions:

Nancy Garcia, West Texas A&M University
Jacqueline Fellows, University of North Texas
Ana Lourdes Cardenas, San Francisco State University
Stephanie Bluestein, California State University Northridge
Joel Harris, California State University San Bernadino
Farideh Dada, San Jose City College
Fredrick Batiste, Houston Community College System
Adam Schrag, Fresno Pacific University
Tara Cuslidge-Staiano, San Joaquin Delta College
Jenna Duncan, Glendale Community College
Walter Baranger, California State Fullerton
Steve Collins, University of Central Florida

The week-long multimedia-journalism academy has a proven track record of helping journalism educators acquire a new skills in digital storytelling that they can use to help prepare prepare the next generation of Latino college journalists for a competitive media market. “The trainers at the academy understand what educators need to learn about new and emerging technologies to better prepare their students for the fast-changing future” said Linda Shockley, Deputy Director of Dow Jones News Fund. “This quality of instruction at absolutely no cost to participants and their universities is priceless.”
The goal of this experience is to learn and practice news reporting using a variety of digital equipment, software programs and platforms. Participating instructors are expected to translate this learning into training for their students, making them more competitive in the media industry.

New Latinx generation embraces the code-switching identity once derided as ‘pocho’

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EL PASO –For some young borderlanders, pocho is a word that unites two cultures. “El Paso and Juarez is its own culture. We are neither entirely American and we are neither entirely Mexican so pochismo would be somewhat some of our language,” said Antonio Villaseñor, 23, a University of Texas graduate student and editor of the online magazine Con Safos. With outlets like Buzzfeed and we are mitú featuring videos on Youtube describing the experience of being a pocho in the United States and new clothing lines like the L.A-based Pocho wear, the term is being embraced by a new generation of Mexican-Americans. “I see it as something positive.

Organización en Ciudad Juarez promueve el servicio a la comunidad a travez de experiencias internacionales

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Cithlaly Bernal,21, ha vivido en Ciudad Juárez toda su vida, sin embargo, fue hasta después de su viaje a Costa Rica, donde trabajo con niños Nicaragüenses indocumentados, que comprendió la situación de los migrantes. “Aquí hablamos mucho de los migrantes Mexicanos que se van a Estados Unidos, pero yo pude ver este problema en otro país. Me impacto ver cómo a la gente se le hace tan fácil discriminar a otros porque los ve como inferiores” dijo Bernal. Bernal forma parte de La Asociación Internacional de Estudiantes de Ciencias Económicas y Comerciales (AIESEC), una organización no gubernamental, que busca promover el liderazgo en los jóvenes de entre 18 y 29 años de edad a través del desarrollo personal y las experiencias internacionales. Ciudad Juárez cuenta con un comité local de AIESEC desde el año 2000.

Border-based PolicyHack uses solutions approach to tackle complex problems

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SANTA TERESA — Many things can be hacked, computers, smartphones, game consoles, and that usually creates problems but a recent hackathon focused on solutions. This hackathon doesn’t hack technology, but it hacks policies, which is what gives this event its name: PolicyHack. “I thought it was one of the best policy hacks we’ve ever done,” said Cris Turner, head of government affairs for the Americas at Dell and a judge for PolicyHack. Dell Inc. organizes policy hacks at sites around the world to bring together government officials, entrepreneurs, business and non-profit leaders, venture capitalists and students. The border event included people from both the U.S. and Mexico and three states, Texas, New Mexico, Chihuahua.

Sports mascots spark vehement arguments on both sides

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The appropriation of Native American symbols as sports mascots is a divisive topic as sports fans enthusiastically support their teams, and others want the mascots replaced, a scholar on the topic said recently. For example, some Cleveland Indians fans embrace Chief Wahoo, the team’s mascot, and fight vehemently to keep their beloved emblem, said Wayne State University Associate Professor Kelly Young said during a recent presentation. Young emphasized his love for sports and how his time in Cleveland helped add to his research. “When I was there it was sort of the ground zero of anti-Chief Wahoo protest going on there,” Young said. For rabid fans, such symbols, are not seen as racist but as symbols of remembrances when they went to games with loved ones.

Lost in Translation: How Irish-Americans transformed the sacred legacy of St. Patrick’s Day into a drinking festival

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James Farrelly, University of Dayton

In 1997, my students and I traveled to Croagh Patrick, a mountain in County Mayo, as part of a study abroad program course on Irish literature I was teaching for the University of Dayton. I wanted my students to visit the place where, each July, thousands of pilgrims pay homage to St. Patrick, who, according to lore, fasted and prayed on the summit for 40 days. While there, our tour guide relayed the story of how St. Patrick, as he lay on his death bed on March 17 in A.D. 461, supposedly asked those gathered around him to toast his heavenly journey with a “wee drop of whiskey” to ease their pain.

This artist is asking how border residents think about air, water, land

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Zeke Peña, an illustrator and cartoonist has spent most of his work as an artist living on “la frontera,” the border, reflecting the reality and issues faced by Chicano and Mexican-American generations. “I think about how the border identity is binary. It isn’t about this side or that side, it’s way more complicated. But that’s the beauty of it,” he says. Sitting in battered, squeaky wood chair in front of a drafting table that displays his work in his studio, the 35-year-old Peña looks the part of a committed artist with his black-rimmed glasses and his shoulder-length dark curly hair and black ball cap.

Es importante reconocer la diversidad entre identidades Latinas cuando se celebra la herencia hispana

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Existen diferentes términos que identifican a la comunidad hispana aquí en los Estados Unidos, términos que dictan un margen entre personas de diferentes ascendencias. El hecho de que se conmemora la herencia hispana hace que salgan a flote todas esas identidades. Expertos en el tema interpretan que hace falta un sentido de unidad entre la comunidad hispana en este país, ya que no se sostienen precisamente las mejores relaciones entre ellas.  

“Yo creo que nos falta mucha unidad….Existen relaciones como de amor/odio entre los mexicanos y mexicoamericanos, en este caso. Lo mismo sucede con mexicanos y puertorriqueños, colombianos y salvadoreños, con toda esta gama de latinoamericanos que habitamos en este país”, dijo María Socorro Tabuenca, profesora de español y de estudios chicanos en la Universidad de Texas en El Paso.

UTEP’s Borderzine wins prestigious national journalism grant for bi-national media project to tell real story of the borderlands

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EL PASO – Borderzine – the University of Texas at El Paso’s award-winning web magazine – received a $35,000 grant from the Online News Association to fund a binational journalism multimedia project between the communities of El Paso and Ciudad Juarez. Students from UTEP, El Paso Community College and the Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juarez will work together on the project called “Engaging Community Across Borders Through Media.”

“It’s an ambitious project to engage border residents from the U.S. and Mexico sides to better relate to the rest of the world the reality of the border minus the usual stereotypes,” said Zita Arocha, professor of practice at UTEP and director of Borderzine. Local media from both sides of the border also will participate in the project with the goal of helping communities identify solutions to common binational issues such as immigration, transportation, environmental challenges, socio-economic development and health and medical needs, Arocha said. Key media partners include KTEP, El Diario de El Paso, El Paso Times, El Paso Inc., Ser Empresario, KVIA, Univision, Telemundo and KFOX. More than a dozen students from UTEP, EPCC and UACJ will work as a team to produce multilingual content about the borderlands – from podcasts to video stories to an e-book designed to dispel common myths about the region, Arocha said.

Borderzine among 150 newsrooms in national fundraising campaign supporting quality journalism

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Washington, D.C. – The Borderzine Reporting Across Fronteras project at UT El Paso is among more than 150 nonprofit newsrooms across the country that will participate in this year’s NewsMatch, the largest grassroots fundraising campaign to support nonprofit news organizations. The national call-to-action will launch on Nov. 1, 2018. In 2017 NewsMatch helped to raise more than $4.8 million from individual donors and a coalition of private funders. This year the number of nonprofit news organizations participating has jumped by more than 40 percent.

What is life really like in a Texas border city?

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Life in a border city can be like a relationship status on social media. It’s complicated. More than 1 million people live in the El Paso-southern New Mexico region. Another 1.3 million live across the border in Juarez, Mexico. We are separated by an international boundary set along the path of a formerly meandering river.

UTEP’s 1st Social Justice Pioneer Award honors leaders in Positive Deviance movement

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EL PASO -When Monique and Jerry Sternin took on the challenge in 1990 of reducing childhood malnutrition in rural Vietnam, they didn’t show up with their own notions of what should be done. Instead, the Save the Children workers went in search of the “deviants,” the families where children were thriving despite having the same resources as those whose children were undernourished.  

The couple was applying the concept of “Positive Deviance,” which initially appeared in nutrition research literature in the 1960s, according to positivedeviance.org. They observed the families that had healthy children and then led these mothers to pass their methods on to the rest of the families, and within two years reported a dramatic reduction in malnourishment. “We had met ordinary people who had been more successful than others.

How to talk about sexual assault and harassment on campus

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EL PASO – While women in the entertainment industry are raising the profile of the Times Up movement against sexual harassment, UTEP’s Student Engagement and Leadership Center is hoping to keep people on campus talking about the issue. “We wanted to bring Times Up here locally to start that conversation and let students know that they can be a part of this too,” said Campus Engagement Coordinator Mallory Garcia. The campus conversation started in January with a Times Up reception and exhibit in the Union East gallery. Justin Tompkins, case manager for UTEP’s new Center for Advocacy Resources and Education said the biggest thing he hoped student took away from the event was awareness. “And most importantly educate, start those conversations, be aware, serve as an advocate for others, and help others understand that this issue is wrong,” he said.

Angela Davis provides an influential voice to the borderland

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When Angela Davis recently spoke at the University of Texas at El Paso, she opened with a statement that was timely and meaningful for this border community. “No human is illegal,” she said. The crowd responded with a big round of applause. Chicano Studies Professor Irma Montelongo said it was an important show of solidarity by Davis, an iconic black rights activist, with El Paso’s largely Hispanic community. “We’re all in a big struggle right now and unless we can come together across metaphorical boundaries then the struggle is that much harder.

Natassia Paloma feeling at home in return to El Paso to anchor KTSM newscast

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After a broadening of horizons tour around Texas, the newest primetime anchor at NewsChannel 9 was ready to come home. Natassia Paloma, 30, is an El Paso native and a UTEP graduate who returned to her hometown to introduce her son Nathan to her biggest inspiration, her grandmother Palmira. “I definitely want him to be raised in the way I was raised. I was raised very humble and raised to be aware of people are going through,” Paloma said. “To really feel with your heart so I want my son to be raised in this culture and I want him to be bilingual and I want to raise him around the people in here.“

Palmira was instrumental in Paloma’s path to become a journalist.

U.S. soldiers remember Afghanistan’s hospitality

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The 16-year-old war in Afghanistan is the longest in U.S. history. More than 2 million soldiers have gone to the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001 with a great many of them deploying more than once. The contrast between life in the U.S. and in Afghanistan can be stark, but soldiers have learned to appreciate some of the experience with a culture steeped in ancient traditions.  

First Sgt. Jessica Cho was deployed to Afghanistan in 2012.

La muestra gráfica “No Literal” en el Instituto Cervantes de Chicago cuestiona el incorrecto uso del idioma español

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Por Rocío Villaseñor

El lenguaje español se ha convertido en el segundo idioma más usado en los Estados Unidos. De acuerdo a un reporte del Centro de Investigación Pew de setiembre del 2017, “la población latina ha casi llegado a 58 millones en 2016” en los Estados Unidos y más de 37 millones hablan español. Sin embargo, no todos los hispanoparlantes lo hablan o lo escriben correctamente, y los medios de comunicación no han ayudado a mejorar esta situación pues no respetan los acentos, y muchos no utilizan la tilde sobre las eñes. La exposición grafica ‘No Literal’ del periodista y diseñador peruano Elio Leturia trata de ejemplificar la situación a través de 12 afiches. Esta variedad de composiciones artísticas muestran diferentes casos, entre ellos, de traducción incorrecta de inglés al español. Un ejemplo es ‘María está embarazada’, al tratar de traducir “María is embarrassed” cuando lo que debería decir correctamente es ‘María está avergonzada’. 

Otro error común por los medios es ignorar agregar la ~ sobre la n. El idioma español tiene 27 letras, mientras el inglés 26.

Mexicano, Chicano, or Pocho. Who am I?

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I didn’t start to question my identity until my first year of college. Before that I thought I was an American citizen attending kindergarten in Ciudad Juarez. Then in third grade I realized that I was Mexican when I crossed the border to attend Houston Elementary School in El Paso. The first day of school a classmate asked me in Spanish – not English – why I was wearing black polished shoes. I remember I looked around and saw that all the other boys and girls were wearing sporty tennis shoes.

Working hard for the money, El Paso drag queens enjoy creative outlet

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Putting layers of Elmer’s glue on his eyebrows is the first step in creating a perfect look. Alexander Wright, who goes by the stage name Rumor, will spend most of his Saturday planning the perfect drag performance. Five hours of the day will be dedicated to applying make-up, and the rest will go toward selecting a variety of dresses and songs for the night’s performance. “Drag is an artistry, you get to create different concepts and test your creativity,” said Wright, who has been doing drag for a year and is currently the reigning Sun City Miss Pride. “Applying makeup is like an oil painting from afar it looks great and cute, but when you get close, you can see all the railroad tracks.”

His first performance was at a local benefit show at Touch Bar and Nightclub in East El Paso.

El Paso news anchor Estela Casas shares her breast cancer battle

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Estela Casas announced Sept. 14 she had just joined a group every woman dreads. The local celebrity and KVIA-TV news anchor has breast cancer, and announced it to her viewers to call attention to the disease. Casas has been part of El Paso’s viewership for 35 years and through her long career she has become a respected and admired personality, far more than a news anchor. This is not the first time that Casas has shared news about her medical experiences and procedures with the public.

National Press Club shocked to see acclaimed Mexican journalist who sought asylum from death threats facing deportation in Texas

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EL PASO, Texas – While many people prepare to celebrate the holidays, Mexican journalist Emilio Gutierrez Soto remains in an immigration detention cell after seeking asylum because he fears he’d be killed if he returned to his native Mexico. Gutierrez Soto, honored for his courageous reporting by the Washington, D.C. –based National Press Club and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, sits in a U.S. Citizenship and Immigraton Services (USGIS) cell in El Paso awaiting his fate. He was detained Dec. 7 when an immigration judge determined he would be deported. “I can’t explain with words how shocking it is to see someone who has been honored in Washington and then the next time we see him he is in prison clothes,” said William McCarren, executive director of the National Press Club, a non-profit organization that represents more than 3,100 journalists worldwide.

How a foreign student taught me not to feel like an outsider in my own city

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I don’t consider myself a social person, especially while I’m in college. I get too focused on school work, and usually meet new people if they are the first ones to come up and talk to me. I was also was self-conscious about people judging me for my English skills. Even though I was born in El Paso, I lived in Juarez, Mexico until fifth grade. And like a lot of others who live on the border, I sometimes felt like I was in an awkward limbo between cultures.

Austin High School to restore, save its history through alumni and student efforts

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When Chris Steven entered the halls of the Austin High School as a student in 2008, little did he know that in his heart he would never leave. “I grew up around Austin. It’s my second home. A lot of my early memories were of going to the football games. I just remember how happy I was to come to Austin and I get excited to see all these people very prideful chanting and cheering for the football teams and singing the (Austin) fight song.

Children find home on the road as they follow parents in military moves

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Bilanki Andang seems like any other student at the University of Texas at El Paso. He stays home and watches TV shows on Netflix on weekends and enjoys the same things many other millennials like. However, his childhood was far from traditional. His father, Staff Sgt. Theophilus Andang, worked in the Army for 15 years as an S1 before he decided to retire in El Paso.

Duranguito advocates continue resistance

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Advocates for preserving the Durangito neighborhood remain hopeful after several tumultuous weeks saw construction crews begin demolition of various buildings, culminating in an Austin judge’s ruling that the proposed $180-million dollar arena cannot be used for sports. District Judge Amy Meachum recently reiterated her July ruling that voter-approved bonds in 2012 cannot be used to build a sports arena. Lloyd Lacy, a Navy veteran and UTEP student said: “I’m gonna take a stand to protect our culture, protect our heritage. Barrio Duranguito was basically a safe haven for many people of color, be they black, be they Mexican, Native American, Asian,”

Meachum ruled that “a sports arena does not comport with the quality-of-life purpose the voters approved.”

The city of El Paso issued a statement saying it plans to appeal the judge’s decision “to fulfill the wishes of the voters of the 2012 bond election.”

Meachum’s ruling and reiteration have bolstered the spirits of Durangito advocates. Lacy typifiies the concern the advocates have for the cultural and diverse history of Duranguito,

“It was a safe place where we could grow and thrive without racist encroachment on what we built.”

A construction crew worker Sept.

Latino journalists, please tell us how its going for you at work

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 The world of journalism is changing – morphing into something not anticipated just a few short years ago. 
 With those changes, the workplace has evolved into something entirely different from what we used to know and opportunities for advancement also might have changed. 
 So, how’s it going? Have the changes been good to you, your career? Are you better off now than you were before the digital revolution? Are you still getting the job satisfaction and opportunities you received prior to the industry’s evolution to a more digital platform? 
 We’d like to know – anonymously, of course. We are polling members of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and other Latino journalists to find out. 
 Two researchers at the University of Texas at El Paso, professors Maria de los Angeles Flores and Zita Arocha, are conducting a survey among Latino journalists to determine how the changes have affected opportunities and job satisfaction. 
 Researchers will continue to collect data through the end of December and the results of the survey will be presented at the NAHJ 2018 conference in Miami. 
 “It is essential to identify the obstacles that Latino journalists face daily to generate dialog within their respective organizations on effective approaches to better train, retain and promote journalists of color,” Flores said.    
 The results will be forward to media leaders and media organizations after they are presented in Miami. 
 The survey will improve the organization’s ability to “comprehend, assess and map the frontier of the industry for journalists at any level in their career,” said NAHJ President Brandon Benavides.

Cuban TV journalist sees border as struggle between cultures

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On a sunny afternoon last March, Cuban journalist Rafaela Balanza Recasen made an unusual visit to the borderline that separates El Paso from Ciudad Juarez. On this, her first visit to the United States, she had no preconceived notions about the border, only that over the last few years thousands of Cuban citizens have crossed the border bridges on foot to seek asylum in the U.S. As the 57-year-old television journalist stood facing the border wall at Sunland Park, New Mexico, she fell silent and reflected on the dangerous journey that has driven many of her countrymen to flee the island and make their way through Latin America to reach the U.S.-Mexico border.“Before me (I see) the tall fence,” she wrote in her diary and later shared with UTEP students about the experience of seeing the border wall for the first time. “It is an infinite wall. I approach and sink my feet into the fine sand… The silence is all pervading. The blue sky seems ironic.

Cultural center provides taste of Turkey in El Paso

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For many local Turkish-Americans, El Paso’s Raindrop House signifies a place to gather with friends and visitors. A place where they can socialize, cook and eat together. “We serve Turkish-Americans, but also introduce Turkish culture to our American friends,” says Sabri Agachan, director of the El Paso branch of the Raindrop Turkish House. “We open our doors and our hearts to every individual in El Paso.”

The local cultural center is part of the Raindrop Foundation, a non-profit, non-political organization whose stated mission is to “cultivate friendship and promote understanding of diverse cultures, the foundation says on its website. “One of the most important goals of our organization is to bring people together from different backgrounds who may have different nationalities, religions, or ethnic groups,” Agachan says.

2nd UTEP journalism professor named to NAHJ Hall of Fame

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UTEP associate professor of practice and the incoming executive editor of Borderzine, Eraldo “Dino” Chiecchi, has been named to the National Association of Hispanic Journalists Hall of Fame for 2017.  Chiecchi is one of five of the nation’s top journalists, academics and documentarians who will be inducted into the NAHJ Hall of Fame during the group’s annual convention in September in Anaheim, California. Zita Arocha, Borderzine’s founder and an associate professor of practice in journalism at UTEP, was inducted into the NAHJ Hall of Fame in 2016. NAHJ’s class of 2017 includes Chiecchi, current multimedia professor at University of Texas at El Paso; trailblazer of diversity Federico Subervi, Ph.D.; journalist and documentary producer Andrés Cediel; NBC Bay Area reporter Jodi Hernandez and Pulitzer Prize winner Nancy Rivera Brooks. The gala honoring these individuals will be Saturday, September 9, 2017 at the House of Blues Anaheim during the Excellence in Journalism Conference.