By Jocelyn Rockhold
Columbia College Chicago offers something no other school in Illinois does: a 300-level journalism class conducted entirely in Spanish.
Elio Leturia, a Peruvian-born journalist and artist, began teaching the Reporting for the Spanish Language Media course in 2010. It wasn’t until 2012 that Leturia came up with the idea of providing student-produced work to local news outlets.
“I started looking around for the outlets that would be interested in this kind of content,” Leturia said. He would reach out to those news operations and tell them, “This is what I do. Are you interested in this latest story?” he said.
The course takes place every two years (other than a five-year hiatus due to a sabbatical and the COVID pandemic) and has generated 83 published student pieces since it started. The student work has appeared in local and national news outlets, including ChicagoTalks.org, Telemundo, Univision, Borderzine and Negocios Now. Students write about a variety of topics, ranging from local art and food to enterprise.
“The content originates from the students, so they are subjects that they want to cover, they want to write about,” Leturia said. The news outlets snap up the work, he added. “They really need content. So they are eager to take the story.”
Since 2014, the college has had an agreement with Univison that allows the Spanish-language TV network to republish student work. In the 2023 spring semester, six students created a Cinco de Mayo taco guide for the broadcast giant. The piece was published on deadline and featured the students’ photography and writing. The team included Miranda Bucio, Óscar Márquez, Lizeth Medina, Citlalli Sotelo, Roger Vásquez and Evelyn Vega,
At the very last minute, Leturia told them they should put together a piece for Cinco de Mayo, he said. “What about we do a taco guide?” he suggested. He gave each of them $10 and mapped out where they were going to go. “So we covered the entire city, so it was not just the Hispanic area.”
Student-produced work crosses international borders, too. Conexión Migrante — a news outletin Mexico City that describes its audience as “Mexican and Latino migrants living in the United States and their families in their places of origin” —has featured stories from Columbia College students. One piece by student Mena Servín focused on Pepe Vargas, founder of the Chicago Latino Film Festival. Another by student Lizeth Medina detailed the rising cost of food at Chicago taquerías.
For students who come from other countries to study in the United States, the work gives them a chance to show an audience what they have to offer, Leturia said.
“When you’re an international student, you take these things to heart,” he said. “When you’re coming here, you have to prove yourself."
“So that is very important to them,” Leturia continued. “They put a lot of effort into doing this.”
Leturia is one of only 7 percent Latino faculty at the college, while Latinx students make up 25 percent, he said. His mentorship reflects back on them, shows them what they can accomplish.
“The student sees me speaking with an accent,” Leturia said. “They can identify me, right?
And that is something that for them is very important.”
He added, “You see that, and then you feel that you belong.”