Michaela’s Muses: Expanding news coverage to Spanish-speaking and indigenous viewers

I had the wonderful privilege of attending a meeting with the Scripps Foundation at the request of a favorite college teacher and friend.

The University of New Mexico Communications and Journalism department is trying to get funding from Scripps so it can found and open a newsroom in New Mexico solely focused on news coverage for the Spanish-speaking and indigenous residents in the state.

The money from Scripps would pay for the brand-new newsroom, a couple of professors to teach out of the newsroom and two professional editors (one focused on Spanish-speaking news and the other on indigenous news). The money that the department is asking for is around $3 million.

My teacher, Gwyneth Doland Parker, requested that I come and meet with the Scripps folks to tell my story. She simply asked that I talk about my time at UNM and the internship I had the privilege of earning from the New Mexico Local News Fund. That internship landed me a full-time career as a reporter here at the Rio Rancho Observer just two weeks into my time as an intern.

My former classmates and current fellow journalists from newsrooms all over the state showed up to tell similar stories.

On the local level, here in Rio Rancho, it would be very helpful to have home-grown journalists learn how to cover Spanish-speaking and indigenous news at this proposed newsroom and come back to the local news stations here to utilize that knowledge.

To have even one journalist that focused on that kind of coverage in each newsroom would broaden the viewership base by at least double. More than half the population speaks Spanish as a first language in New Mexico. There are approximately 68 indigenous tribes throughout New Mexico as well.

I think the founding of this newsroom is a great prospect for potential journalists, newsrooms and the audiences throughout the state.