Aiming for November Launch

Friday, October 17, 2008

First of all, I apologize for the delay in blogging.

I have, however, been busy on several fronts.

I have created a group weblog on a site called near-time.net. I have invited all the mentors and mentees to join this site. This is the private space where mentee-writers will work with their mentor-editors in writing and revising their columns and articles.

Meanwhile, I am editing some of the first content. We have a column in two-parts by Juanita Santiago. She is a Columbia College graduate who was recently hired by CNN. Juanita has written about her two grandmothers, opposite in personality, who have taught her important life lessons.

Another Columbia College student is preparing a photo essay on portraits of women in Mexico.

I am trying to build up a few of weeks of content with the aim of launching in November.

Also, the journalism department at Columbia College has approved me to teach a course called Latina Voices in spring 2009. This is the course description and rationale:

“Students receive intense hands-on experience in writing and reporting skills as well as the opportunity to be published on the Latina Voices Web site. The online site will feature culture and commentary pieces about Hispanic women, one of the fastest growing populations in the United States.

The ethnic media is growing in the United States and with access to the Internet there is more potential than ever to create new media. There are few Latina publications out there and the ones that exist focus on celebrities and fashion. This site will feature opinion pieces and articles about various substantive topics and their impact on Hispanic women, including immigration, health care, politics, education, culture and religion. The site also will highlight various writing forms from column and opinion writing to feature articles as well as prose and creative nonfiction pieces. This course also will help us in retaining Hispanic students as well as help non-Hispanic students better understand the fastest growing ethnic group in the United States.“

There will be 15 seats open in the class. The plan is to help us build content and establish relationships with the students and writers outside of Columbia College who will contribute to the site even after the class ends.

Student Voices

Monday, September 15, 2008

This month classes started at Columbia College Chicago where I am a member of the journalism faculty. This week I will meet with a group of Latina journalism students here to invite them to join the Latina Voices project. They are all members of a student club called the Hispanic Journalists of Columbia, and I am the co-advisor of that club. We started the club two years ago, and the students have won college awards for a television piece they produced on immigration and for student spirit. These young women are energetic and motivated, and I am excited to bring them into the project.

I also am reaching out Latina college students across the country and have spoken with other Latina journalism professors in Texas and New York to recruit some of their students. Most of our writers will be Chicago-based but the long-term goal is to build a national network.

We also have started building a content management system and will use wordpress.org. I have hired a Latino student, Carlos Ardila, who is from Colombia (the country) and attends Columbia College, to help me build the site. We also are receiving technical assistance from a new journalism faculty member at Columbia College, Daniel Sinker.

This month I also attended the Journalism and Women Symposium (JAWS) in New Hampshire and I spoke about the Latina Voices project on a panel. This also was an opportunity to recruit a few new mentors as well as promote the upcoming Web site. I also attended panels and heard from women who are working in new media, including bloggers from feministing.com, and journalists working at politico.com and propublica.org. It was inspiring to hear how women are breaking new ground in this constantly changing field of journalism.

I also am in the process of collecting all the bios of the mentors. A few of those who have agreed to be mentors on the project are: Ofelia Casillas and Margaret Ramirez, both with the Chicago Tribune, Judie Garcia of WGN-TV in Chicago, Elaine Rivera of WNYC Radio in New York, and Daniela Velasquez of TBO.com in Tampa.

Finding mentors at UNITY

Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Latina Voices project leader Teresa Puente tells about her experience finding eager mentors among the many Latina journalists at the 2008 UNITY Conference in Chicago. Puente says mentoring latina college journalism students will be a core component of her project.

Giving voice to Latinas

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

My website will highlight the voices of Latina women and primarily focus on commentary and culture. One of the first things I will do is establish a network of comadres, a term in Spanish used to describe a godmother, or a friend as close as a sister. The comadres will be professional Latina journalists who are interested in mentoring Latina journalism students. I will ask my comadres to occasionally contribute to the website but mostly I will ask them to mentor a college student who is studying journalism. The goal is for these students to do professional-quality work and publish on the website. Then I will ask each of the college students to mentor a high school student, and they also will publish on the website. The idea is to build up the community of Latina writers with the experienced helping the youth. Our base is to start with students at Columbia College Chicago, where I am a full-time faculty member, but the goal is to build up a national network.

The majority of voices that we see in newspaper opinion pages or on blogs today are male and among the women are few are women of color. Even experienced Latina journalists rarely get a chance to write columns or editorials. I am fortunate to be able to do so at the Chicago Sun-Times.

The website will feature a commentary/opinion section, and we will have a section for profiles of diverse Latina women from the attorney to the factory worker, a weekly Sunday news or feature story, a section for non-fiction essays, and a section for photo, video and audio submissions. The website also will feature a monthly Latino book club as well as a mercado, or marketplace, where we will sell crafts made by Latina artists and artisans.

In addition to nurturing Latina writers, the goal is to build up a community of Latina readers and reach out to all those interested in stories by or about Latina women. We will be interactive and allow our readers to post comments as well as accept submissions from a variety of Latina voices. I’m so thrilled to embark on this project because I believe this site will fill a void in the new media landscape.