This afternoon I spoke with a journalist I met last summer while at the National Association of Hispanic Journalists convention in Puerto Rico.
Amanda Portillo and Gustavo Reveles in Puerto Rico
Gustavo Reveles is a reporter with the El Paso Times in El Paso, Texas. He’s also a member of NAHJ. Reveles and I discussed his studies at UTEP (he double majored in journalism and Chicana/o studies) and talked about how when you’re a reporter in a border town, everyone is a border reporter- no matter what the beat is.
“I was turned on about learning Chicano studies from a journalism class,” he said.
A journalism professor would incorporate the subject into her classes, and he said he was fascinated.
“Growing up here, you take it for granted. We’re all here and with the regular text books you’d think the Chicano Movement begins and ends with Cesar Chavez.”
Reveles has spent most of the last 10 years as a reporter in El Paso. The added history he learned gives him more knowledge and sensitivity to be able to relate to readers in the area. Some of the specific classes he took, like a Youth at Risk class helped him when he covered education- he said history is relevant, especially when understanding why an urban brown student might already be two steps behind others when entering the school system.
He currently is covering an enterprise beat on transportation and growth, which he says just like other beats covered at the newspaper, deals with the border.
“When you live right here, right on it, you have no other choice but to be a border reporter.”
A Look At Border Studies 