USC hosted an all-women panel discussion honoring Maritza Félix on Thursday. Félix is the founder of Conecta Arizona, a local media outlet that covers immigration and social issues in Arizona and cross-border populations in Sonora, Mexico.
Felix is also the 2025 awardee of the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Courage in Journalism Awards. Since 1990, IWMF has supported women and nonbinary journalists who continue to report and tell stories amid the challenges and restrictions.
The other speakers in the panel were Elisa Lees Muñoz, executive director of IWMF and Kimbriell Kelly, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and Editor-in-Chief of Chicago Public Media. Emmy Award-winning investigative journalist Jean Guerrero moderated the discussion.
Dean Willow Bay welcomed the panelists and the room full of attendees.
Félix began the conversation by how she proudly embraces her identity as a Mexican immigrant, even after becoming a citizen. Félix spoke on her immigrant experiences and shared she had difficulty drawing boundaries when she first entered the workplace.
It was normal for her to work overtime just because she was on a work visa. Still, she believes her identity is her superpower to share stories from a unique perspective.
Félix asked everyone to close their eyes and think of the first thing that came to mind when they heard the word “border.” The answers from the audience were“traffic” and “document,” which is when Fèlix shared her fond memories with the word.
For Fèlix, “border” meant burritos, buying her wedding dress and her first pair of high heels. She adds that this is why she launched her own news organization.
“It was reclaiming the narrative of the border, reclaiming the joy of living in that space,” Félix said.
Betania Tadesse, a sophomore student studying human biology who attended the event, said she found Félix’s work empowering.
“Maritza stood up for her own narrative,” Tadesse said.
Guerrero asked Kimbriell Kelly her thoughts on the responsibility of local journalism in documenting accurate narratives. Kelly leads one of the country’s major public media organizations, Chicago Public Media.
Kelly opined that in difficult times, the writing of local narratives becomes extremely important.
“You’re not just documenting journalism right now. You are writing the story of history,” she said.
Kelly said that today, identity and representation are of utmost importance, and having conversations with the community at large can help understand the situations people face on a regular basis.
Kelly also said that scarce sustainable and financial options have hurt news organizations and the media industry, and, hence, having a community is needed – finding the thread that brings everyone together.
“I would love to see a lot more collaboration in the future, almost an acknowledgement of other organizations and what they do, and understand and appreciate the differences”, Kelly said.
Guerrero acknowledged that journalists have to work in volatile environments, and asked IWMF’s Elisa Lees Mũnoz about the importance of psycho-social support to journalists.
Guerrero asked how the journalism industry takes emotional injury as seriously as physical safety, to which Mũnoz replied it is hard to tell since most of the journalism industry does not prioritize even physical safety seriously.
Mũnoz said, “We have an emergency fund for journalists, and 80 percent of the requests for that fund are for trauma support.”
Mũnoz shared that if journalists work in a media organization that offers health insurance, they might avoid seeking psychosocial support due to fear of losing story assignments. If journalists work for a smaller organization without medical insurance, mental health care can become too expensive, Mũnoz said.
On top of this, Mũnoz shed light on another big challenge: a shortage of psychiatrists in the US who can understand the responsibilities of a journalist Most psychiatrists invalidate the safety of journalists, asking questions like why approach danger, but that is exactly what the job of a journalist entails.
“You really need to work with a psychiatrist who understands what journalists do, why they do it, and what happens when you are constantly seeing very, very horrible things,” she said.
Félix concluded the discussion that the field must change its idea that reporters improve by suffering more.
“We need to start changing [the idea] that being at risk is part of the job. We need to start creating news organizations and networks that actually protect the journalists,” she said.
She added, “I am an annoyingly optimistic person, that’s very rare in journalism, but I’m very proud of it.”
Félix said she is hopeful that many things can be achieved together, such as creating a better environment where journalists are not forced to compete for limited resources.