Journalism to serve the community. Journalism to transform the world
A look at 100 days at CUNY’s program, a reflection on solutions journalism and the future of Cápsula Migrante, my venture.
In May 2020, after reporting on the Covid-19 crisis in Latin America, and specifically in Peru, I realized the need that vulnerable populations have for specialized information.
With this concern in my heart as a journalist, with my current partner, Pierina Sora, we started the journalistic project “Cápsula Migrante”, whose objective is to offer useful and verified information to the Venezuelan community in Peru.
To put you in context, Peru is the second country in Latin America that has received many immigrants, after Colombia. There are already more than one million people who have fled the crisis in the Caribbean country and have come here. I am one of those immigrants who took Peru as an alternative to have better opportunities.
While every immigration story is different, for some people it can be difficult. And I tell you just a small detail of my experience: I read about the country’s economy, talked to friends I had here, and when I arrived, on July 24, 2017, I did not sleep all night because of the low temperatures and the humidity. Despite being informed, I did not know this detail that affected my stay in the country.
Cápsula Migrante is a very personal project, which besides allowing me to continue being a journalist, has taught me and has given me a more human vision of the profession, and has allowed me to learn to be more empathetic with others and serve them, from what I know.
What was it like at the beginning?
Entering CUNY’s Entrepreneurial Journalism Creators Program 100 Days was a challenge. Having an idea doesn’t seem to be enough. Professional, ethical and human challenges arise. How can I make sure that my idea doesn’t lose meaning and is sustained over time?
This was one of the first questions I faced.
And then came the others. And many more.
Whats is the one big thing I need to achieve?
And although I wanted to be optimistic, at the beginning I didn’t know.
Week after week came the doubts, the questions: Does what I am doing have a purpose? Does it make sense? Can it be a project with a projection to grow?
What is the best and most useful product for our community?
The 100 days at CUNY allowed me to question what I was doing. And this is a good thing.
I am a true believer that solutions journalism is a beautiful way to practice the profession. People are tired of negative news, not to mention all the crises we have lived through this past year. People need a break.
And if there is one positive thing that the Covid-19 pandemic has left behind it is that people’s trust in the media has increased, according to the most recent version of the Digital News Report, prepared by the Reuters Institute of the University of Oxford.
It is time for journalists (and the media) to learn not only how to manage that trust but also to change the negative narrative and bring news with new perspectives, with new approaches, that allow us to have a different look at a fact. And solution journalism is useful for that.
And the media does not necessarily have to have a website.
Now technology has allowed new ways of doing journalism.
A newsletter, a podcast, a small newsroom that only does virtual events about important facts, and then they discuss with their audience in Zoom or Meet: these are just some of the new possibilities. Another one is what we do in Cápsula Migrante: WhatsApp groups where we already have more than 500 people to whom we send news summaries verified by our team, where we do activities to listen to those immigrants women and men, while also empowering them with useful resources and service information with specialists in immigration, entrepreneurship, finance, health. The possibilities are endless.
Thinking about a given community lets you know the best way to help them, to be close to them.
And once you have your community, build trust.
Today more than ever people need information, and journalists have the ability to bring them the best information, to tell stories that connect with the audience, that give meaning and bring a new narrative to these women and men who are in Peru and to so many others around the world: to the incarcerated population in the U.S. to black communities in Europe who are not being heard, to women in Japan who are past 30 and have been forgotten or criticized by society, or to young people and teenagers from marginalized communities in Indonesia who face discrimination and want to change their context. These are just a few examples of specific communities that get to benefit from truly engaging journalism.
Superman or Clark Kent? Choose one to balance your life
The first meeting I had with my mentor, Miguel Ángel Dobrich, was quite enriching. Meeting with him always meant a challenge and a headache that I would get almost as soon as I finished. In the end, I would reread my learning notes from that session to get down to work.
Anita Zielina, in our first session with her, gave us a piece of advice that I took personally, and it helped me with what the next 100 days would be:
“Make your 100 impact plan, fill your calendar accordingly. Stay and keep accountable. Prioritize things that are important. Have a strategy time”.
That was critical for these 100 days.
You know, sometimes I felt like Superman, sometimes like Clark Kent. I was trying to save the world, but I had other commitments to attend to and I lost my balance.
How to achieve it?
I put together these two great pieces of advice from Miguel and Anita, in one, and I decided to bet on the journalism I am doing. Dedicate my strength to see my idea with potential and take advantage of each week’s session to develop it.
What’s next?
When I think of all the roads I have traveled so far, with excellent peers and classmates, I can’t stop talking about the challenges it brought, and how that gave me a new conception of journalism. How that made me think of it with more utility and purpose.
Prior to the 100 days at CUNY’s program for Cápsula Migrante, we had only thought of one form of revenue: asking major investors to support our project. It would help us to serve the community, but would not allow us to involve the people in our processes.
This brought challenges for us, to rethink what we are doing in Peru and allow us to dream of a new horizon, to see beyond even our own physical borders.
Although there is still a long way to go for Cápsula Migrante, we are betting on the service journalism we do for this community, forgotten by the governments. We open the space on our cellphones not only to inform, but also to create a family-like environment, a virtual place where we can talk about ranging from arepa and tequeños (typical Venezuela food), to the migratory mourning and what it meant for each of us to leave our country, our families, and find ourselves in a land with people as different as equal, with a cold and humid climate.
It is also a community to laugh and find each other. To know that we are part of something that transcends beyond the screens.
As Yoshie, my great friend who was also part of the program, says: “Embrace whatever you’ll learn. Help each other with love and trust and you’ll find what you’ve been looking for”. And I am doing this on my way.
We still have a long way to go. But we are expanding now. We are going to implement a subscription model through WhatsApp, where our work was born, to offer an exclusive service. We will also continue to bet on collaborative journalism with Venezuela Al Minuto, Venezuela Migrante, or Conecta Arizona, to reach other latitudes.
In addition, we will soon start a new “franchise” in Ecuador, another Latin American country with a significant number of immigrants. And that makes us very happy. Fingers crossed for our journey that continues.
If you want to know more about what we do, you can follow us on our Twitter or Instagram account. Also, if you want, even for a little while, to join our group and see our beautiful community, you can follow this link.
If you want, you can follow me on Twitter, my DMs are always open. Feel free to also write me an email. I will be glad to talk: pphvilla@gmail.com
