Gladi Suero, a senior at the University of Connecticut who is double majoring in Journalism and Communications and double minoring in Latino Studies and Diversity Studies in American Culture, is the 2021 winner of the Hortencia Zavala Scholarship from the New England Chapter of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

Suero is the first in their family to attend college and has a 4.0 GPA. Suero is interested in the intersection of journalism and social justice and is currently interning at St. Vincent DePaul Mission of Waterbury, the largest homeless shelter in Connecticut.

“Latinx people have been shut out of the media for far too long. We need to have a voice in news writing and newsgathering in order for readers, Latinx or not, to get the full picture,” Suero wrote as part of the winning application. “This goes so much deeper than needing to meet diversity and inclusion expectations. This is about whose voice is telling the story and the Latinx voice is a strong, colorful, multifaceted one that needs to be heard.”

Suero, who uses they/them pronouns, is the tenth Latinx student to receive a Hortencia Zavala Scholarship. The fund was created in 2016 by Hugo Balta, a former NAHJ president, as a way to help striving Latinx students while honoring the legacy of his grandmother, Hortencia Zavala.

“It is crucial that the next generation of diverse journalists get the education and mentoring necessary to produce authentic narratives about the challenges and opportunities of the emerging majority,” Balta said. “The lack of Hispanic/Latino representation in newsrooms often produces one dimensional, biased storytelling shaping the general public’s perception of a dynamic community.”

According to the U.S. Census, there were 62.1 million Americans of Latin American descent in 2020, representing about 19% of the U.S. population. Clost to one in five Americans are Latina/o/x. In New England, Latinos are also the largest minority group, comprising 12% of the population.

The Hortencia Zavala Scholarship Fund has awarded a total of $21,000 since 2017 through NAHJ chapters to support Latino students pursuing a career in journalism. This year’s scholarship was facilitated and judged by three members of the New England Chapter of NAHJ: Mónica Hernández, an anchor for WMUR TV in New Hampshire; Steph Solís, the digital editor of the Boston Business Journal and the Providence Business Journal; and Kevin G. Andrade, a freelance journalist based in Rhode Island who specializes in issues related to immigrant communities.

Coming to a consensus on a winning applicant was difficult because all of the submissions were exemplary, according to Andrade.

“Gladi’s submission showed a commitment to NAHJ’s mission,” Andrade said. “Most impressive were the guts they demonstrated in their submitted story sample which examined issues of racism and sexual violence on the UCONN campus in a way that centered the narrative not only on those affected directly by the issues, but extending that spotlight to show how that community is taking power into its own hands as they advocate for solutions. Gladi’s willingness to tackle these topics at such an established institution demonstrated the guts necessary to fulfill our mission as journalists to speak truth to power,” he said.

UConn Journalism Prof. Steven G. Smith‘s short film WILDFIRE was recently accepted into the Global Conscience World Film Festival. The film was also selected for distribution on the Global Conscience World streaming channel.

Utilizing powerful images of major blazes known as “mega-fires,” the film reflects on our relationship with fire, past and present, and asks how fire will define our future. Mega-fires are erupting at a rate seven times greater each year in the past decade. They are burning upward of 10,000 acres and sterilizing the earth with their intensity.

WILDFIRE: Forest Fires in the American West was selected as one of the “best short films of the last ten years” at the Reel Earth Environmental Film Festival in New Zealand. The film has also won awards at the Los Angeles New Media Film Festival and was featured in the Planet in Focus, International Film & Video Festival in Toronto, Canada.

The film was produced and photographed by Prof. Smith. It was written and narrated by Walter Gallacher.

Watch the film on Global Conscience World or on Vimeo:

The COVID-19 pandemic brought out new forms of resilience in journalists. While the world retreated to houses and apartments, public life closed, and traditional ways of finding people disappeared, reporters found that technology provided a crucial line of communication to sources and coworkers. It made the difference between getting work done and not getting it done, in many cases.We asked UConn Journalism alumni and faculty to name their favorite app, program, or technological gadget that allowed them to keep working through the pandemic. The answers range from methods to do reporting to methods that save or transmit documents and data.

Prof. Maureen Croteau, the outgoing department chair, said her favorite tool is Scanner Pro, a scanning app that allows sending documents electronically. What once might have seemed like an alternative method of sending something evolved into a necessity during the pandemic.

For Grant Welker ’06, a projects reporter for the Boston Business Journal, the technology he could not do without was Google Sheets. “Especially as a business reporter and particularly during the pandemic, there have been lots of cases of coming across huge spreadsheets that needed to be quickly combed for data or simplified and cleaned up for use with a story,” he said.

He learned how to use Google Sheets from a class taught through the New England First Amendment Coalition. A few weeks ago, Welker said he “relatively very quickly went through a national database to find more than 2,500 restaurants in Massachusetts that received federal pandemic aid.” He had done a similar exercise in his previous job at the Worcester Business Journal in a series that covered Paycheck Protection Program loans and grants in Central Massachusetts, and an earlier story tracking prescription opioids.

Pandemic or no pandemic, 2008 graduate Zac Boyer, NFL editor at The Athletic, said his favorite technology has always been his digital recorder—his Sony, not his smart phone. “Call me old-fashioned,” Boyer said. “I just don’t think it’s professional enough.” He added, “Having the ability to convey what someone says accurately is a pillar of our industry, and there’s no better way to do that than with a tape recorder. That may be basic, but I’ve found that allows me to have a better conversation with a subject or a source than it would if I was just jotting down notes that I might get wrong, too.”

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With newsrooms and studios closed everywhere, journalists’ homes became recording studios for podcasts and interviews. Purbita Saha ’12, a senior editor at Popular Science, said her favorite tool during the pandemic was hardware. “Popular Science gave me a Blue Yeti Mic before the pandemic for occasional guest spots on our podcast, ‘The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week.’ But now with the microphone, I can turn my drafty apartment into a makeshift audio studio for podcast recording, Zoom webinars, social media, and more.”

Saha said her web cam is terrible but her voice always sounds good for interviewing and connecting with colleagues and online readers.

Reporters have for more than a century relied on telephone calls, but apps that allow calls over computers may have truly come into their own in 2020 and 2021. ProPublica reporter Jeremy Kohler, who graduated in 1994, said iOS TapeACall and Otter.ai, a transcription app, “have been life changing. Being able to quickly transcribe interviews, news conferences and livestreams, has been a huge timesaver and has allowed me to get great quotes, relying less on notes and memory.”

Kohler believes that when he can record interviews, that frees him to do do a better job interviewing. “Worrying less about note taking lets you use all of your brain to ask better questions and control the flow of the interview,” he said. “I’m not sure how I survived this long without them.

Associate Professor Scott Wallace, who reports on indigenous people in South America, said he too puts a phone app first on his list of crucial technology. “This probably sounds kind of antiquated,” Wallace said, “but I’d say without a doubt that for my current project in Brazil, I am using WhatsApp more than anything else.” He said that groups in Brazil keep track of indigenous and environmental issues in Brazil using WhatsApp. “I use it to communicate with Brazilian contacts quickly by text, audio messaging or voice calls.”

Connecticut freelance journalist Jamiah Bennett ‘20, author of a recent piece about the first Black anchor in Connecticut, said she relies the most on her laptop computer. It might seem to go without saying, but imagine living through a pandemic without this basic piece of equipment.  “In terms of technology, I rely on my cell phone and laptop the most. On my phone, I use Instagram, Facebook, and Spotify the most,” Bennett said. “On my laptop, I rely on Google Chrome the most. My favorite piece of technology is my laptop.”

Eric Ferreri, who graduated in 1995, said Zoom for virtual meetings and Microsoft Teams for sharing documents were “crucial” in his work as senior writer for Duke University Communications. Those two programs “became everyday tools to communicate with my team from afar. Zoom isn’t flawless, but it’s easy to learn and use. Teams can be overwhelming because it does so much, so you use it for what you need.”

Ferreri added that he became hooked to the apps that allow ordering food online and picking it up without interacting with anyone.