Annenberg alumni Heather Navarro and Frank Rojas spoke about navigating the field of journalism through the pandemic and the challenges of producing meaningful stories, as well as the importance of connecting with the communities they report within.
The panel took place on April 11 at Wallis Annenberg Hall and was cohosted by the Annenberg Cross-Cultural Student Association (ACCSA) and the USC chapter of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ) as part of “Hear Us” a conference promoting diversity, inclusion and cultural awareness for students.
Navarro, who works as a Senior Digital Producer at NBCLA, spoke about her experience of navigating a new form of storytelling when the pandemic hit. During the height of the pandemic, she and another colleague at NBCLA put together an online social media memorial for victims of COVID-19. The goal of this online memorial was to give the victim’s family members a space to mourn and honor their memory.
“It’s a hard thing to reach out to people when they are grieving … a lot of times they want somebody to hear their story and validate them and too even though it’s scary sometimes to reach out across genders and across races,” she said. “All people got to have their place on our page.”
Upcoming New York Times Styles fellow Frank Rojas also spoke about overcoming challenges during the pandemic and the importance of connecting with communities despite restrictions in the past. Rojas said “showing faith” during challenges and finding stories and people to talk to has also helped him.
“What helps me too is being Latino and using that as the language and building camaraderie through that and culture and community,” he said. “Once I built that network that made it so much easier.”
Navarro and Rojas both urged students to continue to think outside of the box when it comes to journalistic pursuits to distinguish themselves by asking nuanced questions and persisting in their reporting.
“What’s really going to cut through it all is if you have a totally different take on the story than everybody else and that also just comes from listening to people too,” Navarro said.
Skyler Pak, who is majoring in communication at USC Annenberg as well as philosophy, politics and economics at USC Dornsife, helped organize the event with ACCSA. She said the main goals included bringing cultural awareness and visibility to marginalized groups as it is extremely important to promote diversity across schools like Annenberg and in professional media environments.
“There have been times when I didn’t really feel like I had a community so I just wanted to provide that safe space for students here,” Pak said.
She also spoke about the importance of highlighting diversity and giving opportunities to current USC students to hear from professionals like Navarro and Rojas who “look like them.”
“We basically just started with like what’s important to us and our organization focuses on representation so that is something that we wanted to put front and center,” Pak said.
Victoria Valenzuela, a master’s student in specialized journalism and vice president of NAHJ, spoke about the importance of featuring diverse journalists and talking about sensitive topics.
“I’m really glad that the students were able to come together and host something like this,” she said. “You know, from career advice … to covering marginalized communities, I think that [Navarro and Rojas] did a really good job of covering like a broad range of topics that are really important for students to hear.”
Events included in the “Hear Us” conference will continue throughout the week and will end on April 13. Upcoming panels will be hosted by the USC chapters of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) and the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) in collaboration with ACCSA.