Alumni |
Susana Guzman |
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"Above all, I was inspired by the passion and enthusiasm of the Knight Center team to pursue and improve projects." |
The Knight Center for Environmental Journalism really cares and supports students’ initiatives. As a Mexican graduate assistant, the center supported the first quantitative research on environmental journalism in Mexico. The center also supported the creation of Pal-net, a Spanish language listserv as a means of communication among professionals interested on environmental issues. In 2004, the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism, along with the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, the International Center for Journalists and El Centro para Periodistas de Investigacion, organized a conference in Mexico City on environmental journalism. As a result, the group of journalists that attended that conference now uses Pal-net as a means of communication. Above all, I was inspired by the passion and enthusiasm of the Knight Center team to pursue and improve projects, such as EJ Magazine and the Great Lakes Environmental Journalism Training Institute. At the School of Journalism at MSU, I learned to design and create a Web site, to get organized in the process of researching and to do quantitative research. I also practiced and improved my skills on TV reporting and learned about legal and historical issues in journalism. After graduating from the School of Journalism in August 2004 my son Aaron – now 17 years old – and I went to Texas to work for Rumbo, a network of Spanish-language newspapers targeted at the Spanish-speaking population in Austin. There, I wrote on health issues, from diabetes, the most common disease among Latinos, to the implications for the Hispanic population of the laws issued by the state Congress. I remember the piece on Raul Acosta, an advocate for the disabled who live within the community. Acosta, 41, has suffered from muscular atrophy since he was 8 years old. Now he can only use his eyes and weak voice to communicate his beliefs. He did so last year in a hearing before congressmen. Acosta, who earned a psychology bachelor’s degree, lives in an apartment with the assistance of nurses. If more federal cuts are done to Medicaid, his independence is at stake, he said. When Katrina hit Louisiana, many Mexican workers came to Austin. Rumbo denounced a woman who was gathering their signatures to become their “legal representative.” As their representative, she would have received any type of financial assistance. The workers stayed at the Convention Center, which was used as a shelter for a couple of weeks. In April 2006, I was transferred to Rumbo de San Antonio where I cover education and other issues affecting the Latino community. Recently, I did a story on a Mexican family who used to live in New Orleans but because of Katrina, the family ended up living in San Antonio. The father, a carpenter, came back to work in the construction field in New Orleans. When he was traveling from New Orleans to San Antonio to visit the family, he was detained and sent back to Mexico, leaving behind his wife and four children. |
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