AEJMC Trailblazers of Diversity Interview with Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez

Speaker 1: Today is Wednesday, August 8 2018. And I am

Barbara Heinz. I'm here interviewing Maggie Rivas Rodriguez. And we are doing the AJ MC diversity,

Oral history interview project. And Maggie, thank you so much as sort of the grandma MA

with her oral history project for agreeing to talk with me today. As you know that this interview

will be housed on the AMC website, and also at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American history

at the University of Texas at Austin, your home institution, my alma mater.

So, welcome. You've had a long career in journalism and journalism education.

I know that you spend a lot of time going and speaking at it, elementary schools

about journalism and what got you interested in journalism? How did you get started in the field?

Speaker 2: Thank you, Barbara

for doing the interview. I really appreciate it. So as a child, I was always the writer.

In my family. I always had a diary. I always wrote poems and short stories. But I didn't think about

journalism as a career option, because I didn't know that it was a career option. So I grew up

in a small town in South Texas called divine. And, and it wasn't until I got to college that

I realized that you could actually get paid for writing. And so once I made that realization,

and I discovered journalism, I just fell in love. And really, that's all I've ever done.

Speaker 1:

You are quite the writer. Do you have any role models? Was there anybody that you looked up to?

Speaker 2: Yeah, when I was growing up, you know,

we would watch the San Antonio television stations and there was an anchor named Martha Buchanan, who

I really liked a lot. I thought she was very, very good. And so that was kind of what I saw I thought

about I mean, I wasn't really thinking about journalism. But when I did start thinking about

journalism, I thought about going into television, and being a television anchor. And then later,

I realized that I really would want it to be out in the field. I wasn't so interested in being

an anchor as I was being a reporter. And to me, that's where the excitement is being a reporter.

Speaker 1: And such a good storyteller.

Speaker 2: Yeah, she was really good. She's very classy.

Speaker 1: When you did get into the field,

you were reading newspapers, you were watching television?

Did you get a sense that there was a need for more diversity in the field?

Speaker 2: Yeah. When I was

in college, I worked at the campus newspapers, the daily texts. And I grew up with a very strong

awareness of how Mexican Americans were treated and omitted from lots of different

things as in history books, I never, I never would read a history book or any kind of book in school,

that was about Mexican Americans or Latinos. And so I always was very aware of that. So when I went

to college, and I started taking Mexican American studies classes, it kind of sharpened my thinking.

And I and and at the time, we were a small cohort of Mexican American journalism students.

So we started getting together and we created a small organization called channels instead

of silos that Guney Kassianos, and we held a conference. And so in,

in organizing the conference and planning it out, we started really thinking about the role

of journalists and our role as Mexican American journalists and what that entailed and what we

can bring to the table and how we can change things. So it was, it was something that I was

very aware of, and I would look at the daily texts, and indeed, and the daily texts, and

was very glad to have my contributions, because I wanted to write about Mexican American issues.

So they were very encouraging, but it was just me writing this stuff. And I didn't have a lot

of others there were not a lot of us to do that. So over and over again, you'd see something that

if you didn't write it, nobody was gonna write it. If you didn't report on it, it wasn't gonna

get reported. And I knew that there was a huge need to bring more people into the business.

Speaker 1: What kind

of stories were you writing for The Daily Texan?

Speaker 2: Well, for instance,

I went to Houston to cover a Chicana kind of empowerment conference. So I went with a bunch

of others of my, you know, other students that I knew and I went up there and there was a big

Marta Protest that was talking about empowerment of Chicano women. And,

you know, we stayed in somebody's house and slept on the floor and stuff like that. And he

was empowered, very empowered. I had a very hard back. So I did that. Then I went over a weekend,

I went with a photographer down to the Rio Grande Valley, to cover a farm worker strike. And so I

interviewed the farm workers, I interviewed the growers. And I'll never forget, there was this one

white grower who I was interviewing, and he was an older man, he must have been in his maybe, you

know, mid to late 80s. And I asked him, you know, about the rights of these farm workers. And he was

a very sweet man, really sweet. I liked him. And I said, and he said, Well, we treat them fine.

There's no problem. And I said, but how about the pesticides? And he says, Well, those pesticides

never hurt anybody. Okay, well insert some of these wet backs, but it didn't hurt anybody.

And she just, you know, that was his where he was coming from, you didn't see anything wrong

with that. So, it covered some of those stories, and, and really had had a lot of fun doing it.

Speaker 1: Were there

other stories like that, that you felt really contributed not just

to a better understanding of creating a more diverse world, but making change?

Speaker 2: I would like to think

I can't think of those two in particular, specifically, I remember very well.

I don't remember the stories. I did a lot of dental assignment stuff. So you know, whatever

came down the pike, and like I was assigned to do, but a lot of the stories were stories

that I wanted to do, and and I find that I found them and I find it now that if it's a story, if

it's your story idea, you're much more invested. And you're willing to put a lot of work into it.

Speaker 1: Are there ever,

ever stories that you felt like your paper didn't cover? Like you were at the Dallas Morning News?

Speaker 2: Well, my first newspaper job was at the Boston

Globe, Boston Globe. Okay, yeah. And so when I got hired at the Boston Globe, it was my first

newspaper job. And I did find that there were, I was the first Hispanic reporter, I was the

first Hispanic employee. And my first day on the job, they were walking around introducing me,

this is Maggie. She's our first Hispanic reporter. And finally, after about four of these, I went to

the managing editor. And I said, so I was hired because I was Hispanic or because I was a good

reporter. And he says, Oh, no, because you're a good reporter. The fact of the matter is they

needed Hispanic. And so that is why they brought me in, I know that, but I wanted to hear them say.

So anyway, so they were stories, though, that I felt

that, that they missed the boat on. And there was one particular story about a Puerto Rican woman

whose child had been kidnapped by a babysitter. And then the child had been recovered in Miami.

And so they sent me to go to the interview. She lived in Chelsea,

a little suburb of Boston, and they lived in the projects. Really, really poor people

didn't have any furniture, were sitting in the kitchen, you know, like they had just like

kitchen chairs. That's what they used instead of a couch. And I interviewed, it was a great

story. They spoke only Spanish, this great story, came back with the story. And, and I told the,

you know, the Assistant man, the Assistant city editor, I'm expecting this is going to get good

play. And so when I went home that night, I couldn't find the nice story. And it was buried

on the obit section. And so I went to the city editor, and I said, why is this and he said, Well,

you got to talk to the city editor. So I went and I talked to the city editor. I said, what's,

what is the deal? I said, this is a great story. And he said, Well, it came in late because of

course, I didn't get the assignment until it came in late. I said, That's not an excuse. I mean,

I know we do. I mean, it should have at least been the metro front because they recovered

the kid and the kid was going to come back. He says he gave me lots of lots of excuses.

And then I had that little epiphany that I realized that the reason that she hadn't gotten

at least the metro front was because she was poor. And she was Hispanic.

And when I made that realization, I was just crushed. I was devastated because

I really believe that the Boston Globe was doing its very best to, you know, to cover diversity and

I started crying in the newsroom and I ran into the ladies room. And this African American friend

of mine, Gail Pollard came in and I told her I said, Gail, they don't care. They don't see and

she says that's how it is Maggie. That's how it is. So she said, so I went and I talked to the

editor. Tom Winship, but I told him I said, you know, we, we have a problem we have,

we don't have enough, we have too many middle class reporters who can't see the story,

bare bones for what it is. And yeah, I didn't change anything, but it did Create in me a better

understanding of how the system worked. And it was, it was a symptom of a societal problem,

that, and to this day, you know, if you are poor, and if you are a person of color,

you story probably isn't going to make the news as if you were

a rich person living in a in a fancy area of, you know, a Boston, and if you're a minority as well.

Speaker 1: Was it any

different when you were in Dallas or El Paso?

Because it's a very different geographic area and socio economic area. Did you see any differences?

Speaker 2: You know,

I think that by and large people, journalists really do want to really have the intention of

wanting to to cover their communities. And they do have the best intentions. And that

was true in Boston, it was true in Dallas. And I, when I was covering the US Mexico border,

there people there had a real intention of wanting to cover those communities. What

one thing I did find, so there was an intention to do it. And I do believe that their hearts were

in the right places. I do think one thing that I've you know, the other epiphany I had was that

when I could be covering a story that had no racial angle to it. And I would go out

and cover it. And then I would, I would find the racial out element. And it's nothing I was looking

for. It just came up and bit me. And people were really open to talking about the racial element.

Would they have been opened if I wasn't a Mexican American? Because it's Mexican Americans coming

up and telling me these things? I don't know. I kind of don't think so, so I kind of think that,

that that there is if people see you, and they think that they can trust you with that. And

they think that you're going to take it seriously, because maybe you've had the

same experience or you know, that there is that experience. Maybe they'll open up to you more.

Speaker 1: Were there any stories that you

felt you really had to fight for? To get coverage for? In any of the papers where you were working?

Speaker 2: Yeah, there was one story, I don't

remember the year now. It was, it must have been like 1990. There was a class action suit being

brought by Latino Hispanic FBI agents against their agency, saying that they had been passed

over regularly for promotion and that they hadn't been given the same opportunities, on and on. So

I covered the US Mexico border. So I became aware of this story. And it was going to be tried at the

federal courthouse in, in, in El Paso. And so I wanted to do the story, because this is going to

be important. So my editor was a really great guy who just didn't see it. He says, you know, why is

this and I said, this is so I had to fight I had to like push him and push him and push him. But

finally he says we'll just go see what it's about. And so I started covering the case. And it was a

really important case over and over again. And it was something like 361 FBI agents. Wow. Now,

I don't know that much about FBI agents. I do know though they are really straight arrows. And

they do not believe in a lot of rocking the boat kind of thing. And so that really just

made it very clear that they had adjusted costs, and that this was something that if you could get

that many people to sign on to it, there was a problem if there was a substantial problem here.

So initially, I had to fight on it. Once it came out in the Dallas Morning News, the national media

started, you know, the Associated Press covered it and all the national media was there. So it

became a big national story. So that was one that initially I had to argue about.

But then after a while, you know, they got it and it was it was just because,

you know, sometimes there's the other human element. I think

that if sometimes editors can get kind of stubborn, and they want to hear you really

explain why this is a big story. And so I think that's what is going on with that one too.

Speaker 1: Have you ever

felt like you had to rock the boat so to speak with certain coverage?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, to a certain extent, but you know, I never felt like it was rocking

the boat. I just felt like it was kind of pushing the envelope a little bit.

And there really wasn't that much of a price to pay for it, I didn't feel like,

you know, they behind my back, they might have said, There she goes, again, another Hispanic

story, but they never told me anything to my face. And the fact of the matter is that the story's

got pretty good play. And they've gotten a lot of response from people in the community.

And you know, people don't often tell you, when you've done a good job,

they'll tell you when you haven't done a good job. But they don't say anything. But then I'd

be out in the community, and somebody would say, Oh, I read this. So I knew that people

were reading it, and they were kind of, you know, they were aware of what I was doing.

Speaker 1: We hear a lot about sometimes people

cover certain stories or uncover certain things depending on what they're working on. And,

and as a result, they may suffer repercussions for pushing the envelope of pushing coverage of it.

Did you feel as a woman or a Latina that you ever were in that boat?

Speaker 2: I don't think so. I don't think so i think

i think that one thing that does happen is that you don't get considered for promotions,

in some ways. However, to me, the highest position was being a reporter, so I wasn't looking for a

promotion of that of that kind. The other part of it is, I think that you get so much more,

if you're willing to take a stand and, and, and just insist on coverage, that I think that you get

back a lot more. So I have this, this, this idea that they may not like me, but they'll respect me.

And in the end, I would much rather be respected than liked. And so it's never bothered me.

One of the things we've seen over the years is there hasn't been a steady progression of

rising to another level, you say reporting is at the top level. But some would say that there

needs to be more people of color in management. And when in the newsrooms that you worked in,

did you see any evidence of people of color women or lesbian or transgender

in your newsrooms that weren't treated fairly, maybe didn't have the opportunity to rise

if they wanted to go above being maybe a reporter or whatever their position might have been?

Speaker 2: Well, it's been several years now.

I think, I think that there were some people that were held back a bit, and sometimes because they

were gay. And this was not even openly gay. This is people that were folks kind of knew that they

were gay, but they, they never made an issue of it, and they never acknowledged it. So I do think

that there was that. As far as I think that with Latinos, I think that there has been a little bit

of not taking going up to the next level. And part of that is because I don't think that we've been

very aggressive about demanding that or getting that. That said,

I've seen Latinos, go work by law and who's now at the St. Louis post dispatch.

And fellow fellow cowboy hat, mother, Lee, who's at the Dallas Morning News Now what I see and

he's now the president of asnd. So I think that I think that there's been a few, probably not

as many I do see the value. I wish that I had wanted to do that. And it's never wanted to do

Speaker 1: it wasn't on your radar.

Speaker 2: It really wasn't.

Speaker 1: Yeah,

but you were producing good journalism. Yeah. What were some of the challenges and triumphs that you

encountered in producing the kind of journalism that you felt was representative society?

Speaker 2: Yeah, well, when I was working at the Dallas

Morning News, I did. The League of United Latin American citizens lulac was meshed in Horrible

Bosses. The national president was suing one of the local chapters in the local chapter was suing

the national president, it was awful. Some of the top leaders had been accused of ambulance chasing

in connection with this big tragedy that happened in South Texas. So it was this organization that

had a proud history that was kind of falling apart at the seams. So I wrote about that moodier

and it was a big front page. story and I interviewed people that were other other national

organizations and the then nclr. Now it's me that president Willie Segura interviewed him, I said,

you know, what's going on with lulac. And, and he was really blunt in his assessment, he said,

Well, the problem is that they have, it's an all volunteer staff, they don't have professional

staff. And so that means that they don't have a lot of continuity from one administration

to the next. And he went on and on, it was, you know, it's a really important context offer. So

anyway, it was a fun page story. And then I did, and then the conference was coming, the

convention was coming up now querque, a few weeks later, so I went to the convention to cover it.

And by this time, it became a national story. And so when I was covering this convention,

they were so engrossed in their internal problems that they never had any

public events, like panels and stuff, it was they were an executive session the entire time,

people that I had known for years and years were considered friends weren't speaking to me,

because they felt like I had betrayed the Mexican American community, because I had written this

ugly story about what's going on. So my feeling was that, I feel that, and I still feel very

strongly that we, all of us, and not just Mexican Americans are members of that group, I think that

we have to hold these organizations accountable. Because local chapters put a lot of money

and time and effort into creating scholarships and good good deeds for this organization. But

they're not holding their leaders accountable. And these leaders, I mean, some of them have been

complete crooks have gone to prison. And I just, I think that it's, it's, it's so wrong to me,

it's really condescending to not hold them to the same standards as we would any other organization.

And I think until we start taking ourselves more seriously, that way,

it's going to be very hard for us to, to get these organizations and bring them up to a level where

they're professional, they're respected, and people who are really serious are

going to want to belong to them and to, you know, contribute to those organizations.

Speaker 1: So do you

think your colleagues in the newsroom understood the dynamics of that story? And

Speaker 2: no, I don't think so. And I never discussed it

with them, I just kind of sucked it up. And, you know, I, there's still people to this day, that

won't speak to me because of that. And I think that, that it's true, anytime that

you are at something negative, whatever your group is about your group, you're going to be

considered, you know, a traitor to your kind, I think that's just part of the things. So

you just have to be able to, to withstand that and to believe that you're doing the right thing,

and that you're unified by showing a light on this, that you're you're,

you're doing a public service, so not not everybody's gonna like you.

Speaker 1: And you mentioned Tom Winship,

but on the globe, how about your editor, the Dallas Morning News,

do you? Do you feel your editors got it about diversity, and, you know,

wanted to do more, despite being the first Hispanic employee at the Boston Globe,

Speaker 2: To the greatest to

mostly I do, however, what time of the Dallas Morning News, our big editor brought in a

diversity expert to talk to our minority reporters. And so they brought all the

African American and Hispanic reporters into a room and we're supposed to fill out the survey

about how we're being treated. But the survey said, How are African Americans treated here? Are

African Americans given a chance to be promoted? And so I'm looking at this and I raised my hand,

I said, Excuse me, I said, All this is about African Americans. And and I said, and we're in

Texas, and in Texas, where it's mostly Mexican Americans. And the guy says, Oh, I'm just

because he was coming from, from the east coast. And so what he was looking at was

just the African American experience. I think that that said something about their idea of

diversity. And I think a lot of people are still caught up in that when they think of diversity.

They think African American, and they don't think really more broadly.

And they don't look at the context of where we are. So I think that continues to be an issue.

Speaker 1:

Do you think your peers were open to discussions about diversity at the places where you've worked?

Speaker 2: That's a good

question, and not so much. I don't think I think that for a lot of my colleagues,

it was something that they didn't have to worry about. Because those of us were people of color.

We're worried about it. So I think I think that we needed to get some buy in, because it doesn't

matter what the people the very top wants to enforce. If the people at the bottom aren't

really with you all the way, I don't think only you're gonna be as successful as you could be.

Speaker 1: You mentioned the group of

students at UT Hispanic Latino students getting started. And on the west coast, there was a

big movement with the California Chicano needs media Association. Talk a little bit about how

you started your organization. And you may have worked with that which morphed into the

National Association of Hispanic journalists the big contribution that you've made in journalism.

Speaker 2: Yeah. So. So

you can see that it sounds like that was just a college thing, right. But, but I was, but it

made me really want to seek out because there are so few of us seeking out other Mexican Americans.

So my first job was at UPI in Dallas. And I remember one time I was in the Regional Bureau,

so I had to call New York. And the person who I talked to in New York at the headquarters was

named John Gonzalez. I said, John Gonzalez, where are you from John, from San Antonio.

And so I would always make those connections. And it turned out much later, he ended up

working at the Dallas Morning News and became a really good friend. But when I was in Boston,

I was invited to be part of this planning committee for the first convention that

was being held in San Diego in 1982. So it was part of that planning for about a year.

And so as part of that, I wrote letters to as many Hispanic journalists as I could,

that I knew, in the northeast, and told him this was going on. And would they be willing,

if like so. So it kind of started, we started thinking about it and getting people involved. So

we ended up having a fairly good representation, so we went to the San Diego conference.

And then from once a week, when you got there, there were about 700 people, this convention

conference, I should say, wasn't a convention because we weren't an organization. But

we're looking there. And we saw 700 people that looked like you. And it had somewhat similar

experiences. And it was really empowering. So we knew just in the planning that we wanted to have

a national organization. And so we started kind of like trying to push CCNA, because CCNA was

a large organization, and they already had a track record, and they have some infrastructure,

and they didn't want to have anything to do with it. So that's when Jerry sasse stood up and said,

at the very end, we're doing a post mortem of the conference. And, and he basically told CCNA, well,

if you're not going to be part of it, then you need to get out of the way, because it's

going to happen. And that's when CCNA came on board. So then I was on the planning committee,

the organizing committee for nh J. And as part of that, it was,

that was just exciting, because we went around the country for our planning meetings and

met people in different places. And, and we got to, we got to meet people, you know, so

just in the planning of it, they were Mexican American, we're Puerto Rican, we are Cuban.

It was great. It was great. And I did feel an affinity to all the different people. There's

some people I know that say, well, we really don't have that much in common. I do feel

like we do have a lot in common. I think that you know, just by the nature of the Spanish language.

I think that's a big part of it. But I do think there's a lot of similarities and experiences.

Speaker 1: And it came to fruition

in 1984 is the National Association of Hispanic journalists. Yeah, I know, we're Incorporated.

Speaker 2: I think we're incorporating three.

And then we thought we would have conferences every year

after that. So I guess 84 might have been our first national conference.

Speaker 1: Was that in Washington?

Speaker 2: I believe so. I believe so.

Yeah. You're at the University of Texas at Austin, longtime member of the faculty,

how in the world? Did you transition from the world of journalism, to the world of academia?

Speaker 2: Well, I started a family.

That's this. The short answer is, I had always thought I was going to be because I really love

journalism so much, I thought I would be taken out deep first from the newsroom. And

then I got married in 93. And 10 months later, our first child was born. And I took a year off

and worked as a journalist in residence at UTEP. And then I got pregnant a second time.

And so my last job covering the border, I was on the road, three weeks out of a month, oftentimes.

So I didn't want to do that anymore with kids. And, and I knew about this program

at North Carolina, but the Freedom Forum was funding. I never thought about it for myself,

but Then I thought I could do this. And it's really fun. And it's a different thing.

So that's how I ended up going to North Carolina for the Freedom Forum fellowship?

Speaker 1:

And how did you find that different from being on the East Coast, going to school and be

at a different time in your life working on a PhD? What was that experience, like?

Speaker 2: It was a blur, it was really a blur.

Because it was, it was a very intensive program. In 26 months, you had to complete your PhD,

right? So after 26 months, you could keep on going, but the money dried up. So you had a

real incentive to do everything in 26 months. And so by this time, I had two small children,

I started, you know, my, my second son was born. In February, I started the program in mid May.

So we moved to North Carolina, and I started this program with two babies. And so it was

very intense. So it really, it really was like a blur. But, you know, my husband stayed home

with the kids for 10 months. And then my younger sister came and lived with us for a year. And,

you know, so it was, it was a very intense time. But at the end of it, I had a PhD.

And I really did learn a lot at the great faculty at North Carolina. And, and I was credited this

Freedom Forum, because if it hadn't been for that program, I never would have gone to graduate

school. I'm not one of these people that was, you know, I really want a PhD, it really wasn't that

I wanted a PhD, I wanted to start teaching. And to me, this was, this was kind of a union card.

Well, and the Freedom Forum thought that they were that we were good. All of the fellows were gonna

go in and we were gonna, we're gonna transform the Academy. And I think the kind of the opposite

happened, I think we went in, and then we said, Oh, my God, this is fascinating. Everything,

you know, the papers that I would have read three years earlier. So boring. All this is fascinating.

And it was just it that really transformed me. So I was really lucky to have gone to that.

Speaker 1: Now, what's

your experience at Columbia different from when you worked on a Master's?

Speaker 2: Yeah, because that was a professional program.

And so that was a program. You know, by that time, I had already been working at the daily Texan on

and off for three years and had taken a bunch of reporting classes, but Columbia was a whole

different level. And so it was very, very rigorous. So you'd be writing every week,

reporting every week and being held to very strong standards. And, and so that was,

that was a different kind of rigor. But it was equally intense. And the other part of

it going to Columbia was, you were living in New York. And so here's this, you know,

small town, Texas girl, going to UT Austin, and then going to New York, and,

and that was like, I would spend entire weekends sleeping, because it was just too much. I was just

on overload. It's like I kept. So I was I was it was very, it was really intense. But I loved it,

and strongly recommend it to anybody. Now, it's really super expensive. So yeah.

Speaker 1: Tell us about your first teaching experience.

Speaker 2: Well, you know, I think it's important

to note that, you know, I had started when I was with the Boston Globe, I did the urban journalism

workshops for two years. So they asked me to do it. And so far, I think it was a two week program,

both times so I did that for two years. And that was kind of like my first foray into teaching. And

then when I was at the Dallas Morning News, I did the Maynard workshop in Berkeley for three years.

So I go there for two weeks at a time for three years. And I think that really did kind of give me

at least a little bit of chops in teaching, and working with people that had never taken

a journalism class. So that was that was really helpful to me, so my first and then I went to

YouTube, and I taught there for a year. And so I had kind of, it's kind of like every time that you

do it, you kind of learn, get a new insight and a different way of doing it and learning a little

bit. So when I started at utl, and at North Carolina, they had me teach a summer class.

So I taught the summer reporting class, which was really intensive. In fact, from that I've learned,

I really prefer not to teach summer school if I can, because it was really really, and I was

taking a class at the same time. But anyway, so I get to UT and they have me teaching kind of the

basic reporting classes. And I really love doing that, you know, it was it was the intermediate

reporting. So they had already learned about how to write a lead and how to organize a new story.

So it was a little bit more fun. At the time, we were like 45 students, but then you'd break

into three different labs you had to use for all these. So it was fun. It was really enjoyable.

Speaker 1: Do you find in academia a

need for greater diversity? Have you seen that in your work?

Speaker 2: Yes. As far as faculty,

you know, in the 20 years that I've been there, we have not hired another

Hispanic, Latino, Latina, faculty member. And, and it's something that I feel very strongly about.

And I understand the structural reasons for it, because oftentimes, when departments are

looking for a position, they're looking for something, a very specific skill set.

And so they want somebody who does social media, or research into social media, they're looking for

that particular profile. And as long as you have that particular profile, it's not going to happen.

So I think that we need to, we, our department, that it's not for lack of wanting, but we need to,

we need to crack that nut. What I worry about in my department, and I've told them all this,

is that the day that I turned in my resignation, that's the day that they'll get more serious

about the hiring, that they're Hispanic, because that happened to me at the Boston Globe, you know,

for a long time, I'd go and I'd say, we need to look at this person, look at this person.

And they'd say, yeah, yeah. So the day I turned in my resignation was when the city editor said,

oh, let's talk about this, let's find another Hispanic reporter. So you know,

it shouldn't be a question of replacing, it should be a question of augmenting what we have there.

And it makes a big difference that the enrollment of Hispanic students has really increased since

I've been there. And I and one thing that we really need is we need role models for these.

And you know, it's not just a role model for the Hispanic kids. But it's kind of an

added thing that I do think that we need to make sure that we take care of that

Speaker 1: In Austin of all places,

and you would think in Texas of all places. Yeah, that wouldn't be an issue.

Speaker 2: But yes, it is.

Speaker 1: Either other

cops. So that's a challenge, certainly, but are there any kind of challenges or triumphs that

you've encountered working on diversity? She's in the academy?

Speaker 2:

I guess one thing that we've done is I think that oftentimes, if, if you say that you want to do

something, you're not told that you can't do it. And so I've been teaching this world history class

that's dedicated to the Latino experience for a million years. And, and that's been that's been

something that I think we've, we've brought to the table. So you know, every spring I teach it,

it's something different about the Latino experience. It's gonna be really loud.

Can you hear that? Okay. So I think that that's gonna, you know, so that's something I've been

able to introduce as some classes. So I did teach, covering the US Mexico border for a while.

I've taught this other class, I am teaching now a class reporting in espanol. And so there's classes

that you can propose and you can bring in and I've never been said, told to know. So I do think that

that's possible. There's a lot of programs that are brought in roundtables, panel discussions on,

we did a panel discussion on the channels instead of cells and comunicazioni,

as an anniversary of that some years ago. We did other things on Spanish language news, news media.

So those are things but you know, to really change structurally, there has to be some

ways of building it into institutionalizing it. And I think that's the challenge that we

have right now. institutionalizing all the changes that we've made.

Speaker 1: Talk a little

bit about the Voces project that you're so passionate about and you worked on and

you've had a book and conferences and tell us a little about it.

Speaker 2: So that comes out of a

story that I wrote for the Dallas Morning News. It was a profile of the Mexican American Legal

Defense and Educational Fund, MALDEF. So as I was doing the profile I interviewed the founder whose

name is Pete the Idina, who is practicing law in downtown San Antonio. And so I went to interview

him and at the end of the interview, I found out he was a world war two veteran, I said, Oh,

really, my father's a world war two veteran and he said, Yeah, all of us old Civil rights, war horses

world World War Two veterans, and I said, I said, Oh, my gosh, so I said, I want to do a magazine

story about that. So doing the magazine story, I couldn't find any books about them that knew

about oral history. And so that was in 1992 and 93. And, and so, we wanted to launch it from 93.

An oral history project is dedicated to the world war two generation. That was the generation that

created new institutions like MALDEF, the GI Forum, it tore down barriers to entry for a lot

of people. It desegregates a lot of institutions, universities, colleges, and semi public schools

in Texas and the Southwest. So they had done a lot. And they really had never gotten there.

There has never been a single book written just about their experience. And so, you know, then

life intervened. I went off, got married, went to graduate school. When I started at UT Austin, they

allowed me to teach a class that I could teach any way I wanted to and had a newspaper component.

And so that class became the oral history class that I do now. So we've changed, we started off

with World War Two for many semesters, we did the Vietnam generation for many semesters now

we're doing, we change off different semesters, we're doing political and civic engagement now.

And so every time we do one of these, it's just amazing, the the, the material that you get out

of it, and things that nobody has written about yet. So my students are getting a chance to do

interviews with people that were involved in, in, in in, you know, activities that really have not

been researched. So that all will go into a book someday, either I'll do it or somebody will do it.

Speaker 1:

That's amazing. Now you spent some time working at KUT Austin.

And you also have had your students working on stories for K UT talk a little bit about that.

Speaker 2: Yeah. So I didn't really do radio before

and I really love radio. So I asked my department chair and he in turn, RV Brenner asked our Dean,

we met with the dean, we had a proposal to, for me to spend a semester working as a full time

reporter at the NPR station in the same building where my office is housed. And we met with the

general manager, Stu Vanderbilt, and proposed it, the department would pay my salary just as if I

was teaching. But I would be a full time reporter for KUT Wow. And so they said, Well, sure,

we'd love that. So you know that it's kind of one of these things where everybody's really busy. So

nobody has a chance to teach you anything. So I kind of had to teach myself to audition. And then

I worked with a really great editor at large, he is the managing editor there. So I got a chance to

write stories. And I you know, to me, it was really more about getting the skills not so much

having the like the great story. And so I was willing to do anything that would get me just

some experience, going out recording interviews, recording audio, and then editing it into a piece.

So I did some I did, you know, basically, I did everything from you know, fuel efficient cars to,

to a bunch of stories. I mean, it was really fun. I just had a blast. And so I really invested in

audio now and I taught audio storytelling for the first time last year, I'll teach it again in fall.

I now want to develop a podcasting class. So I'll teach that in the fall of 2019.

So yeah, it's kind of a whole different world. And I do think that it's really important for us

to teach the skills classes to stay current,

because oh my gosh, everything has changed so much in the 20 years that I've been teaching,

we didn't have social media. When I was a student, we didn't have any of this stuff. So it's really

important for us to stay current and it's important for our students that we stay current.

Speaker 1: And were you able in that

position also to to bring your passion about diversity into coverage or to thinking about

Speaker 2: Yeah, to some extent,

I did, I did a lot of stories because they had this one initiative on East Austin,

which, which was the kind of the home place for the African American, and to some extent,

the Mexican American community. So I did a lot of stories about African Americans mainly.

And those were really fun. And those were stories that I felt

had not, had not gotten a lot of attention. So amazing character, kind of character sketches of

people that were real community leaders, you know, a guy who had a funeral home

in East Austin, and you know, he's just this really amazing, delightful guy to interview that,

that that's what I said there was a story that I didn't get to air until this past year that I

recorded. I started recording, but it took a long time to cultivate. So I kept on cultivating and

cultivating. And finally it all fell together. And so in, in, in June of this year, it finally aired.

Speaker 1: Wow, yeah. So it does take a while.

Speaker 2: Sometimes it does. And you know,

I think that's the other part of it is it's really important if you're doing stories about diversity,

in particular. A lot of people don't trust news reporters because they're used to seeing it just

there whenever stuff, bad stuff is happening, and so forth. For us to go in and try to cultivate,

it oftentimes takes a lot of time. So that's the other cost of diversity is news organizations have

to really be invested in it enough to let it take the time that it's going to take.

Speaker 1: But if diversity takes a backseat,

what will be the effect? If news organizations don't make that investment? If

the academy doesn't make that investment? What do you think the effect will be?

Speaker 2: I don't think we'll ever get back to as bad as

it was in the 60s. And before, I don't think that that that ship has sailed. And, and mainly it's

sailed, because there are now a lot more people of color, and a lot more people who are not of color,

but who are vested in diversity, so that that's not going to change. So there's still going to be

more diversity than there had been. However, we still have a long ways to go a really long

ways to go. And I think that it's really not enough just to have the numbers, it's not enough

to say we have, we now have 20% of our of our newsroom is this, you know, we really need to

teach people and raise their awareness. So they're unable to understand the context,

all the stories that I'd cover as a covering the US Mexico border, and it started off being

a nice little story about this topic. And then people would come up, and they would tell me

the context of this nice little story. And it would make it a much deeper, more serious story.

That's the thing that our young that all of us need to understand that, you know,

that that's that it takes a real effort to do that. And our young people have to understand

that this is what is required. And so they need to understand the history. Why is it that? Why?

What is this whole immigration thing about? What is it what's the background of immigration,

it didn't just isn't something that just started yesterday or

today? What's the whole background of kids being torn from their parents? You know,

this is something we've seen it before. And so if they understand that context,

they'll be able to do a much, much more serious journalism than they would otherwise.

Speaker 1:

Do, you have a fondest memory of something you've done in journalism, or in the academy. So far,

Speaker 2: you know what I one that really

the thing that I did for NAHJ was, I created a conference newspaper with a lot of people,

but it was an H j reporter, and we did it in 1988. in Dallas, many, many years later, I did it with

a TMJ, I remember did that for a couple years. And so and it's not something that I was like,

there's a bunch of us together, and we all work together. And I think that that was like

one of the most fun things. Because when you work with people, you just look at the human in them.

And I think that that was one of the most fun for a lot of the students that were involved in

a snake newspaper, for instance, they had never worked with somebody who is Asian American,

or somebody who has an excellence they had never done that. And all of a sudden,

these are your These are your, your cohort this is these are your editors. And I think that changes

the dynamic in a much more profound way. And I think that that's when it stops being just kind of

an exercise in diversity, it becomes embedded and it's in our bones. And it's something that we just

do as a matter of course. So that's really kind of the most fun. And it was just fun, just kind of

like building something from scratch, and seeing as it develops. And then after you've left it that

it becomes something much better than you could have ever dreamed of. That's really gratifying.

Speaker 1: You mentioned that

Hispanics had never worked with Asian Americans. And that leads me to be thinking about the Unity

conventions and the things that went on there with the different groups working together.

And we could probably talk forever, but we're just about out of time. Is there anything else that you

want to share with this project, the trailblazers project that you think it's important to testify?

Speaker 2: Yeah. So I think that, you know,

the trailblazers are doing something that's really essential in journalism education. And it's that

the people that are being interviewed right now are people that have made different contributions

in lots of different ways. And it's something that we need to keep the spotlight shining on

diversity, because it's going to increasingly become something that is an afterthought for a

lot of people. So as long as we can do that, and this is one effective way of doing it, we know

Speaker 1: well, Maggie, that small town girl from divine has

really made some contributions in the journalism world and with the academy and the Trailblazer.

So thank you for spending this time and sharing with You with us your memories.

AEJMC Trailblazers of Diversity Interview with Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez

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