Covering Coronavirus: Tips, best practices and programs

How to diversify coronavirus coverage to ‘start taking off the layers of this onion’

Latinos in the U.S., many employed in hard-hit service industries and less likely to have health insurance, have more concerns about the coronavirus than Americans overall. That means journalists have an added responsibility to keep Latino communities informed and represented in their stories. 

That’s no easy task as the coronavirus has shrunk newsrooms and forced many journalists to work from home, away from neighborhoods and gathering places where many stories reside.

You can still reach out. Here are some tips on how to better engage Latino communities. We welcome any others you may have.

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  • Diversify your newsroom by contracting with a freelancer of color.
  • Become familiar with the geographic community. If you can’t go there, at least know the neighborhoods. It will help when you contact residents remotely.
  • Look for Facebook groups and neighborhood listservs and introduce yourself to community members there. On Twitter, follow hashtags that may be trending on Latino issues to understand concerns and unanswered questions you can explore.
  • Invite members of Latino communities into the newsroom. Show people (through virtual meetings these days) how journalism works and editorial decisions are made. 
  • Read community publications. You will find stories and sources there.
  • Get to know the religious organizations, agencies and nonprofit groups that serve Latino communities. Communicate with the leadership of these organizations.
  • Consider translating some of your stories into Spanish and sharing them. In one recent example, the News  & Observer in Charlotte, N.C, collaborated with the Spanish language Enlace Latino on a story about the coronavirus and immigrant farmworkers. On a larger scale, here is how ProPublica and Univision joined forces.

Two leading Latino journalists share their views of coverage during the coronavirus outbreak.

To Hugo Balta, the news director at Chicago’s WTTW and president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, one of the main underreported stories of the coronavirus has been the impact of the outbreak on undocumented workers.

“We in news media need to do a better job of telling those stories of the undocumented immigrants, [and] of the non-citizens holding legal status and really help get them out of the shadows,” Balta said in a Freedom Forum-sponsored webinar Wednesday. “We are interconnected. This is a virus, a disease that affects all of us. And if a large portion of our community across the country are not getting the help that they need, they are not getting the information that they need, the resources that they need in order to combat it, then it affects all of us.”

Veteran Texas reporter Rebecca Aguilar brings an extra commitment to her reporting: “I make sure that we have diverse people in the stories.”

So Aguilar talks to shoppers like Lucy Bocanegra, worried that she needed to stockpile face masks as the coronavirus spread. She thinks about stories like canceled Quinceñeras in the midst of the outbreak. She goes on Facebook and checks in with Latino-focused groups.

Aguilar, a freelance reporter with 28 years in television news and the Latina daughter of Mexican immigrants, chairs the diversity committee for the Society of Professional Journalists where she is also secretary-treasurer. She writes for two Dallas community newspapers — the White Rock Lake Weekly and the Texas Metro News, an African American newspaper. It’s work that has made her a champion of publications that serve distinct neighborhoods or distinct audiences.

“What’s important right now is that every story has to be told,” she said. “And not every story is generic, we have different layers, now is the perfect time to start taking off the layers of this onion. And every layer may be one of Hispanics, of African Americans, one of the gay community. Our job right now is to drill down and find those stories, and find those voices.”