Hi, my name is Alicia, and I'm a veteran journalist.
I care deeply about the future of news for a number of reasons, but mostly because without local news polarization and poverty increase and voting and government accountability decrease.
Read more ⤵️
Happy Latina Equal Pay Day to all the Latinas out there hustling day in and day out to earn 52 cents for every dollar their white male coworkers make (on average) 🙃
And happy Thursday to everyone else who openly talks about their pay at work in an effort to close the wage gap.
Spending today thinking about how after working at
@chicagotribune
for four years, I was making ~$45K, but a white dude who had just been hired was making $60K despite his lack of experience🤪
Happy
#InternationalWomensDay
Some ✨personal✨ news
I'm going to be launching a nonprofit newsroom in the Inland Empire in late 2022. If you want to follow along with my progress, sign up for my newsletter (it's free!), and get ready! It's gonna be a big year.
This live fire map from
@latimes
is an incredible feat of coding — especially when done on the fly as a number of fast-moving, wind-driven fires broke out yesterday.
I’m supposed to be working, but all I find myself doing is refreshing my Twitter feed to see which of my friends and fellow journalists have been laid off by the
@latimes
.
What an absolutely devastating day for journalism.
“This is on you until you choose to do something different. This will continue to happen. Somebody needs to stand up for the children of this state or they will continue to be killed just like they were killed in Uvalde yesterday,”
@BetoORourke
says as he's escorted out.
Fourth: Five hours into the encampment, UCR Chancellor Kim Wilcox released a statement that started with an acknowledgement of what's happening in Gaza. It's a profoundly different statement than what other university's have released.
First: These students are organized and ready to continue advocating for their demands, however long it takes. By using the techniques of community organizing combined with social media savvy, they've been able to quickly mobilize hundreds of people.
Sixth: This kind of activism is not new on the UCR campus, it's been ongoing as students and faculty work together to find a more equitable path forward.
With that, I hope you'll read the full story, which you can find here:
When my ex was stalking me, the folks at Tribune Tower locked down around me. I was escorted to my car at night by security, and even before my restraining order was approved, he was barred from the building.
We are now 12 hours removed from LAPD entering USC's campus, and I'm still in shock about how everything went down under the cover of dark with news media forced to stand so far back that they couldn't actually see/hear what was happening.
And to then have no PIO on scene? Wild.
Second: Education is a *key* part of this encampment. From teach-ins led by supportive faculty to special guest speakers talking about what's happening both in Gaza and the US, it's integral to their work.
🚨 Some personal news 🚨
Today I put in my two weeks notice as a designer at Tribune Publishing's DPS. My final day is Dec. 31.
On Jan. 1, I'm leaving Chicago to start the drive to Los Angeles. And while I have all the feels, I'm mostly excited to see what the future holds.
Third: Faculty support has been part of the encampment from the start. There's a tent near the Bell Tower with a banner for the UCR Faculty for Justice in Palestine and a pretty constant stream of faculty members engaging with the organizers.
Fifth: Throughout the few hours I spent at the encampment, I lost count of how many people came by to offer words of support, ask how they can help if they weren't able to stay and wanting to learn more.
I didn't witness a single negative interaction during that time.
Breaking: SJP UCR announces an agreement has been reached with UCR administration that will result in the dissolution of the encampment today after eight hours of talks.
Your officers blindly fired their weapons toward a crowded grocery store and killed Mely Corado.
Instead of publishing this and turning the comments off, you could have just said nothing.
Animated slides show how the quake permanently jolted a huge block of earth along the fault away from the other. Here, the image shows how one block of ground slid past the other in the Ridgecrest earthquake. (
@SotisValkan
/ Google Earth / DigitalGlobe)
“But have you seen a palm tree on fire at night? It’s a fist of flame raised to the sky, raining sparks. It’s beautiful, sad, ironic, unnatural, memorable and dangerous. A lot like Los Angeles.”
Some ✨personal news✨
Today is my last day with
@cbsla
. These past two years have been a wild ride — earthquakes, pursuits, mass protests and a pandemic.
But I learned a lot, and I’m thankful I got to work with some amazing folks.
More about future plans next week 😌
There’s laughter. There’s conversation. There’s studying. There’s games and books and community aid at the USC encampment.
There’s grads taking photos all around. There’s quiet. There’s peace. There’s birds chirping.
The funniest part about Elon taking away the full news story preview card is that it makes it so very obvious how much of Twitter's content is news content.
The first batch of COVID-19 vaccine has arrived in Los Angeles at LAX. This is a major milestone for science, our country and our community. Thank you to all those who made this delivery possible, and are part of the incredible effort to distribute vaccines around the world.
"By law you have to get out of the way," an officer says to a faculty member asking to speak to a supervisor about how far away the "press area" is from the encampment.
✨Some Professional News✨
I started a new job earlier this month at
@USCAnnenberg
as a journalist in residence at
@AnnenbergMedia
.
Super excited for this opportunity, even if I’m still struggling with this whole waking up in the morning thing 😅
For journalists covering the mass shooting in Monterey Park, a gentle reminder to take care of yourself in the days, weeks and months ahead.
Covering trauma can itself be a trauma, but there are resources out there to help ease the burden.
Domestic violence is terrifying. Working through the system that's supposed to protect you is difficult and confusing, and it often falls short.
All of this to say that my heart breaks for the families of the three killed in the shooting.
“And now it’s coming for me, in an attempt to shame me into silence.”
Do you still have a column in the largest major metro daily in the Midwest while countless have been laid off? Are you still getting paid six figures while your colleagues are struggling through furloughs?
I've given 35 years to
@chicagotribune
, even more if you count my time as an eager Tribune copy boy running for cigarettes and coffee. It's been a tough few days. But maybe it's time I try writing a column for Wednesday about
#CancelCulture
. Let's see what happens.
Two years ago today I said goodbye to the
@chicagotribune
and Chicago.
I remember walking to my car after taking this picture and bawling my eyes out in sadness, frustration, fear and relief.
If I could tell past me one thing, it would be that we landed on our feet.
Non speaking Angelenos might not be aware that there is a curfew set in place at 6pm because LA county, which is is nearly half Latino, didn’t send the message in Spanish
The past nine months have been some of the most rewarding, challenging and enlightening of my life.
@USCAnnenberg
is a really special place and working with the students, staff and faculty has been one of the greatest privileges of my life
.
@RivCoRecord
got it’s nonprofit determination letter in the mail today — less than a month after filing for tax exempt status.
We are now officially a nonprofit newsroom 🥹
Seeing LA news orgs making reference to “on-campus media,” without saying that the information they are reporting second-hand about what’s happening at
@USC
is from
@AnnenbergMedia
or
@dailytrojan
, is so deeply frustrating.
If you’re using their reporting, give them credit 😤
Dr. Cheng reminds me of my high school math teacher, who would always take the time in class to answer our questions like this.
Never once did he make us feel dumb for wanting to know more about how and why the things we were learning came to be.
These are really good questions about what math *is* in a very deeply probing way. Unfortunately the haters are piling in... I have transcribed the questions and typed up my instant answers here.
Ending my tenure at
@CBSLA
with 3,985 published posts and 23.5 million page views in just over two years, including 17 months working from an oversized chair in my apartment
Lunch because this girl turned in a freelance story about equal pay AND successfully sold her pitch for a longform narrative story slated to be published this fall :)
To do this, I will first be launching in Riverside County and will later expand to San Bernardino County with a second sister publication.
I'm doing it this way because I believe each county deserve its own high-quality, hyper-local newsroom based there — not next door.
When the company that laid off half a newsroom with zero notice sends out an email that starts with: As you may recall, one of our company’s values is People First.
Happy Equal Pay Day!
Though we mark the occasion today, most women have not reached their equal pay days for this year.
— Asian American women - March 5
— White women - April 19
— Black women - August 22
— Native women - September 23
— Latinx women - November 20
If only there was a group — let’s call it a committee — of employees who came to a table to talk with management about what they need and want to be successful 🤔
TribPub in an email just now, sad that participation in their employee survey fell from 74% to 49%: "We certainly wish more employees elected to make their voice heard."
@tribpub
, we've been loud & clear, at the bargaining table & w/ today's petition. You just aren't listening!
A week late with this thread breaking down
@tribpub
's most recent annual report filing with the SEC, but better late than never.
Here's the full report for anyone who's interested:
Things I refuse to glorify as a solo founder:
Hustle/grind culture
Depriving my body of sleep/food
Prioritizing short-term productivity over long-term happiness
Went to a screening of Ava DuVernay’s new film, Origin, only to be greeted by DuVernay herself ahead of the screening!
Side note: This is definitely one of the best movies I’ve seen this year. Truly a masterful piece of cinema that everyone needs to see.
Very sad to say goodbye to this place and these folks. This week at
#Maynard200
has been a dream, and being in community with such deeply talented, kind and impressive folks has been so affirming.
To people in positions to hire folks: Please be transparent about whether you already have a preferred candidate.
Let people make informed decisions about whether they want to go through a months-long process knowing that the odds are stacked against them.
A note for those who don’t know how
@NPR
works:
“NPR operates independently of the U.S. government. And while federal money is important to the overall public media system, NPR gets less than 1% of its annual budget, on average, from federal sources.”
I am the first person in my nuclear family to graduate from college.
I am a product of affirmative action. Does this negate the fact that I have worked my ass off? Absolutely not.
It simply allowed me the ability to make the most of my efforts.
If you know me, you know someone who has had an abortion.
If you love me, you love someone who has had an abortion.
If knowing this makes you feel differently about me, that’s something you’ve gotta unpack babe.
For the past month, I have poured my heart into reporting this story.
I’m so happy with how it turned out, and I hope you’ll spend some time reading it.
Dispatch from MacArthur Park — A pro-union t-shirt has been placed on a statue of a newspaper boy honoring the legacy of Harrison Gray Otis*
*Otis was publisher of the LA Times at the time of his 1917 death
via
@KeithPaesel
A little bit of background: I've worked in corporate newsrooms for the last seven years, and it just doesn't work for me. So, to combat this, I want to create a newsroom that's transparent and ethical in both how it covers news and how it treats those who make the news.