By Jocelyn Rockhold
In 2015, the Online News Association awarded just 11 grants for Innovation in Journalism Education, one of which was given to the Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno. Using these grant funds, the university launched a bilingual journalism project named Noticiero Móvil. The project first aimed to provide 2016 election coverage to English and Spanish speaking residents, an important goal when considering over 25% of Washoe County is bilingual.
“[The Reynolds School of Journalism] received the grant and started community outreach to start listening to the community, to understand how to build a website that would appeal to them,” said Claudia Cruz, managing editor of Noticiero Móvil.
While the initial goal of Noticiero Móvil was to report on the 2016 elections, the project has since branched out to cover other topics like community health, 911 calls for Spanish speakers and Nevada state legislation. Student-produced content is hosted on the Noticiero Móvil website and is typically available in both Spanish and English.
Content created through Noticiero Móvil also appears on the websites of partners like the local NPR affiliate KUNR, news source This Is Reno and nonpartisan site The Nevada Independent en Español. The partnership between KUNR, This is Reno and Noticero Móvil recently won a Murrow Award for coverage of the COVID pandemic.
“The KUNR news editor has been coming into our class and sitting with the students and helping them script and organize their audio pieces,” said Cruz.
Students can intern with KUNR and The Nevada Independent and often go on to work with those outlets after they graduate. Cruz added that staff members at KUNR are often graduates of Noticiero Móvil themselves and “want to participate and come back.”
“Our goal is to find stories out in the community and complement [KUNR’s] programming,” said Cruz during a recent Brown Bag presentation with the Center for Community News. “Up until recently, most of the staff members were not bilingual, but because of Noticero Móvil in part, half of the reporters are alums of Noticero Móvil and about 5 or 6 out of 8 staffers are bilingual.”
In addition to working for KUNR and The Nevada Independent, students who have contributed to Noticiero Móvil go on to work at places like The Intercept and the City of Reno. One Noticiero Móvil alumnus, J. Diego Zarazúa, now serves as the inaugural Spanish-focused Public Relations Specialist for the City of Reno.
Noticiero Móvil is offered as a course through the Reynolds School of Journalism, but students can also intern or serve as research assistants for the project. Students in majors other than journalism are often recruited to Noticiero Móvil by Cruz. These students work on graphic design, public relations, photography and video production. One such student is Ashley Martinez, a public relations major who was going to continue an internship elsewhere but was instead recruited for Noticiero Móvil.
“I was going to continue my internship, but something that I hadn't really practiced before was how PR might work in Spanish and English. Really, all my experience for my [previous] internship was English-based public relations and marketing, and I hadn't really explored [the Spanish] side at all,” said Martinez. “I'm not a Spanish major or anything like that, but it's still a skill on my resume that doesn't really go with any practice. And so I saw that opportunity at the Reynolds School of Journalism.”
Martinez is involved in the creation of a new Noticiero Móvil project called No Me Digas, a gossipy pop culture podcast series that will cover subjects like Bad Bunny. Martinez recently designed and promoted a No Me Digas logo vote on social media and has already filmed two segments for the project.
Ultimately, the No Me Digas podcast hopes to inspire interaction with the local community. According to Cruz, No Me Digas will consist of 10 minute-long videotaped podcasts that are “more relevant to 14 to 30 year olds and probably English-dominant Latinx residents of the community of Northern Nevada.”
Other students including Sophie Mastrangioli and Aaron Piña are working on Noticiero Móvil projects like Minuto Médico, a series of one-minute videos in which bilingual medical professionals from the University of Nevada, Reno provide public health information. Noticiero Móvil will provide the content in both English and Spanish, a feature that is a core principle of the project. Martinez notes the importance of appealing to bilingual community members.
“I think being able to know who these audiences are and what kinds of things they're interested in, how you engage with them, that's going to serve me really, really well in my future career,” said Martinez. “I have to take those audiences into consideration and I have to know how to be able to connect with them. It's not a one size fits all type of messaging.”