En EspaÒol

Veteran reporter makes jump from English-language to Spanish-language newspaper

by Dawn Withers

Evelyn Hernández is the opinion page editor and editorial writer at El Diario/La Prensa, the nation's oldest Spanish-language newspaper. Hernández was an editor and reporter at New York Newsday for eight years and wrote a column, "Living in the USA," which provided information for immigrants. She oversaw the production of several special sections, including the voter guide and a World Trade Center page that ran after the 1993 bombing. She was an editor in the coverage of the 1991 Crown Heights riots and the Union Square subway crash, for which the staff won the Pulitzer Prize. She began her career as a reporter at The Fort Worth Star-Telegram in Texas, and has also worked as a reporter at The Miami Herald. She was president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists from 1988 to 1990 and served on the board of directors for five years. She is a founder of the Network of Hispanic Communicators in Dallas-Fort Worth and a founder and past-president of the Florida Association of Hispanic Journalists in Miami. Hernández is also a founding president of Unity: Journalists of Color, Inc. She earned her bachelor's degree in broadcast journalism from Boston University and her master's degree from New York University, where she studied Latin American and Caribbean history and culture. She has taught journalism at Queens College, Columbia University and New York University. Hernández can be reached at ehernandez@eldiariolaprensa.com. What was the transition like from English-language papers to Spanish-language papers?
I went to graduate school and taught for two years in between. It was for me a pretty logical transition because I went to graduate school to study Latin American and Caribbean studies because I always found that I was covering the Latino community no matter what else I was covering. I thought I needed some background literally in where people were coming from. I had to overcome biases people have about the Spanish-language press, that there's biases about the standards and biases about the reporting process. I found certainly there are differences but in some instances the writer's reporting is more literary than at an English-language daily. In general, we are doing the same things. We're trying to get stories that no one else has, to get them in the paper before anyone else does. We want to get all sides of the stories. We're working on tight deadlines. I think the main difference is that we're covering Latinos and that's what we do. There's a general understanding among my colleagues about what that means. At English-language papers I found myself having to explain and educate a lot of the time. In the Nieman Reports, summer 2001, you wrote about your move to El Diario. In it you write, "I don't have to explain why it's a story. For the first time in my life, I don't have to justify wanting to write about Latinos." Do you see that as a problem many minority journalists face at mainstream publications in having to explain why covering their communities is news?
Yes, I do. With the 2000 Census we have more ammunition to bolster the case. Good reporters see things happening out in the communities long before the statistics come out to support it. I think that's part of the frustration to see things happening and to know that they're happening -- it's really an additional responsibility of minority journalists to have to educate their colleagues. I'm talking about beyond the initial pitching of a story, which we all have to do. I think that minority journalists have the additional burden of explaining why this story is of importance to a larger audience. I think especially in this day and age we have to explain that more than is necessary. As journalists, we all have a responsibilities to cover all communities and that newsrooms and newsroom managers need to stress that to all of the reporters and editors in the newsroom. You need to be up to speed in what is going on in all communities and that it's not the responsibility of Latino journalists to come in to explain to you why this is a story. They should just have to pitch the story like anyone else. It's still an additional responsibility that minority journalist still bear and I think that it does add to the frustration and to the burn-out element among Latinos and other minority in the newsroom. How did El Diario handle the news of the World Trade Center attacks compared to mainstream dailies?
Our readers are as patriotic but at the same time they are more willing to criticize the United States' actions in Afghanistan. They're more willing to talk about finding a peaceful solution. I see more reaction to the deaths of the civilians over there. In general, I think that there's a lot of patriotism but at the same time there's also more of an ability to be critical and to at least suggest that the U.S. should pursue other options. Were there topics that El Diario covered that maybe have been lacking in other papers regarding the WTC attacks?
Yes and I think other publications got to these topics eventually. I think it's a matter of how quickly did we identify these issues versus other publications. We did a story within a week on the Latino victims of the World Trade Center and if you look at some of the news coverage it really seemed that for the first few days as though the only people who had died were white people, whether it was the business people who had died or the fire fighters, police officers who had died. We in the first few days gathered string on Latino victims in particular while initially reporting that the thing had just happened. A week later we did a front page story, a series of stories actually, with the headline 'Sangre Latina', which is 'Latino Blood.' The front page was faces of the victims and inside was story after story of people who had been lost in the attacks and stories on their families. Some of them were business people but many were workers. There was a man who was laying tile in an elevator and his wife had breast cancer. This was story we had done early on. She just died about a week ago. He and his wife had been preparing his children and the family for her death. On Sept. 11 he was laying tile in an elevator and was killed. They left a 4-year-old and a 7-year-old. That was a story we did that was later in the Times and in the Daily News. We did a story on the embassies. The issue 'Sangre Latina' also had stories on Latin American embassies here in New York. People from Latin America were calling the embassies trying to get information. We ran a report from each embassy with whatever information they had available. It was really an effort to remind people that there were a lot of different people of all ethnicities and races that were victims in the attacks. The other story we did ahead of everyone else was the story on Latino Muslims. We did that early October about the double-whammy that Latino Muslims are facing the wake of Sept. 11. We were ahead of the curve on a lot of the stories as they related to the Latino community. Very early we did a story on the second and third tier of victims, which is the people who are losing their jobs. Those are restaurant workers, service workers, people who clean offices. Those kinds of stories we identified early and have been following them throughout. How is working for El Diario/La Prensa different from working for a more mainstream daily?
We're covering a very specific community but at the same time it's very complex especially in a place like New York City. Latinos are everywhere here and I think what we're finding out across the nation is that Latinos are everywhere nationally. We are a community paper covering the Latino community and we're covering stories always with that angle in mind. I think that most Spanish-language papers in this country are in the situation that El Diario is in where we don't have the big resources of the mainstream daily newspaper. We are probably in the same situation as a lot of other community newspapers, we don't have a lot of the same resources but we have a lot of the contacts. People in the community turn to us for help. I don't know how many newspapers have that situation where people in the community feel like they have a problem and they literally walk to the newspaper to get help. What issues do you see presented in El Diario that aren't examined in the mainstream press?
We identify much earlier in the process things that are going on in Latin America. For example, the push factors and the pull factors that make people immigrate to the United States. The situation in Argentina and the economy there is bound to have some affect on people form Argentina who are going to be coming the United States. There are stories here that we cover like the difficulty of people to travel from here to their home countries in emergencies. We had a man here who was ill and his wife and child were not able to come from the Dominican Republic to see him before he passed away even though politicians and his doctors had given the American Consulate in Dominican Republic proper documentation. His family was unable to travel here in time to see him because the American Consulate was convinced that if the wife came she was going to stay here illegally. Those are the types of issues that we continue to deal with because in the wake of the World Trade Center this issue has come up again on the humanitarian visas. We cover those kinds of stories that affect the working class, the immigrants. We also tell a lot of success stories. What do you think newspapers can do to increase diversity in their newsrooms?
Hire! Hire and promote blacks and Latinos and Asians and Native Americans. It's not complicated; it's very simple. Unfortunately I think that there's this false notion that newspapers are hiring minorities in droves and unfortunately in these situations it always ends up that people are pitted against each other. In fact, when you look at the numbers of minorities in the newsroom, there's still not many of us. It has improved but really it had no place to go but up. There just aren't that many of us and further you go up the chain of command, the fewer and fewer people of color you have. You have people in positions of power and influence and we're just not there. We're still in a situation where you start to name people and you can name them very quickly, which means we still have a lot of work to do. How did you decide that journalism was the career you wanted to pursue?
I always enjoyed reading and writing and I was the child of working class parents so I knew if I wanted to write for a living I was going to pick a profession that would pay on a regular basis. That's how I came into journalism. What keeps you in journalism?
I really believe in the mission of journalism. I do believe that our profession is to help people and to expose unfairness and illegality. It is also to help people who don't have access to the powers that be, who don't have access to resources and the institutions and the government and other agencies that are in a position to help them. It is our role to be the conduit, to be the liaison between the people and the people who can make their lives better. You have been a speaker and participant in countless diversity programs and workshops aimed at recruiting minority journalists and educating minority students about journalism. How successful have those programs been in bringing minority journalists to newspapers?
I think the programs are very successful but unfortunately we've seen a cutting back on those programs in recent years. I don't see a significant replacement for those kinds of efforts. The other thing that has happened is that programs have come up for mid-career people; that's a very crucial time. That's when we tend to lose journalists of all race and ethnicities and people start to hit that burn-out point. When people start to burn-out and leave the business it's more devastating for us a group. Programs that were started in the 70s and 80s in the wake of the Kerner Commission Report have been discontinued and I don't see other programs coming up to take their place. I don't see alternatives to those programs. How has being involved with Unity and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists affected you as a journalist?
It's very empowering. It's like going back to the well to be re-energized and be invigorated and to be able to share information with Latino journalists and other journalists from around the country. To share information and share strategies is very helpful and comforting. I think it's really important for journalists of color to always remember and to share the common issues and common battles that we have. Getting together with other Latino journalists from around the country really helps me to see the big picture and reaffirms for me how important it is for us to continue the work of training young people who are interested in journalism. To continue to offer support and encouragement to people so that we do stay in the business. Do you think that the current recession is going to affect recruitment and diversity programs at newspapers and other media outlets?
My experience has been that programs to recruit and retain minorities are still not considered essential programs to the well-being of a news organizations. Rather than being part of the core business plan, they're considered extra programs that as soon as a recession rears its ugly head, this is one of the programs that gets cut. I think until news organizations totally rethink that and restructure their management policies, every time a recession hits one of the things that's first to go out the window is the retention and recruitment programs. I've seen it happen before and I don't see anything in place currently that's makes me think it's going to be different this time around. What these companies need to do is make the employment and retention of minorities a part of the core plan of the news organization of the company. It's just good journalism and it's just good business.