Students Seek Training for Spanish-Language Media

Her family fled the civil war in 1989, when she was 14, and made a home in the United States. Although she earned an associate's degree in TV production at Los Angeles City College, Abrego still lacked the Spanish-language skill and deep knowledge of the diverse Latino community that she would need to work at a Spanish-language network or newspaper.

Now a student at Cal State Northridge, she has learned that it will be easier than she expected to follow her dream. The university, already known for its journalism program, began offering courses this fall designed to train reporters and editors to work in the burgeoning field of Spanish-language print and broadcast media.

Plans are in the works for a new minor in Spanish-language journalism. Officials hope to have the program approved and in place by December 2004.

"They are creating a new generation of professionals -- people who can speak English and Spanish and who know the community," said Abrego, 28, a single mother who lives in student housing with her 4-year-old son.

The minor will be under the journalism department. To complete the program, students majoring in journalism also will need to take three courses in either Chicana/Chicano studies or Central American studies, in addition to two Spanish grammar classes and a Spanish writing class. Students who are not journalism majors will need to take three English-language journalism classes covering writing, reporting and ethics, as well as the Spanish- and culture-related classes.

The first of two new classes is being taught this fall by Jose Luis Benavides, a former University of Texas assistant professor who came to Cal State Northridge from a Catholic university in San Antonio to be the program's steward.

The 20 students in his Spanish-Language News Environment class are exploring the development of Spanish-language media and related issues in the Latino community, such as immigration and labor. Students also are visited by working print and broadcast journalists who occasionally speak to the class about what it's like to work in Spanish-language media.