Reflections on diversity, newsrooms and news
An interview with Rachel Uranga, Fall 1999

By Rick Coca
Special to chipsquinn.org

Posted: Feb. 5, 2007

Rachel Uranga (Fall 1999), reporter at the Daily News in Los Angeles, covers Latino affairs and transportation. She is also the president of the Los Angeles Chapter of the California Chicano News Media Association (CCNMA). Uranga was a Chips Quinn intern at The Contra Costa (Calif.) Times Richmond bureau. She and Rick Coca (Spring 2006) became friends while sitting across from each other in the busy Daily News office in Woodland Hills, Calif., where Coca is a reporter. Uranga invited Coca and a host of other staff members to sit on an in-house diversity committee to discuss the paper’s coverage of different communities.

Rachel Uranga Age: 31 School: California State University-Northridge CQ internship: Fall 1999 at the Contra Costa Times (Walnut Creek, Calif.) Current job: Reporter, Daily News, Los Angeles

Rick Coca: As a Latino affairs reporter, do you have a goal?

Rachel Uranga: To give voice to people who don’t normally have a voice in the paper. And to expose the intersection of how we live with government and with policy.

Q: What are some of the stories that you’re most proud of?

A: I like to think that every day the story I work on is the one I’m most proud of.

Q: What stories have gotten the biggest reaction, either positive or negative?

A: The one I did about Spanish-speaking politicians and Korean immigrants speaking Spanish.

Q: Tell me about that story -- I remember when you were working on it. (Coca was a 2005 Summer intern for the Daily News at the time).

A: The story was about immigrants who migrate (to Los Angeles) and live in other immigrant communities where the dominant language isn’t English. So they learn that secondary language before English, or speak the other one better. It’s a very L.A. story, because you see it all the time if you just look around.

Q: Let’s talk about the Daily News signing up for the National Association of Hispanic Journalists’ Parity Project, in which the Daily News has agreed to increase the number of Latinos in the newsroom so that staff reflects more closely the community the paper serves.  Has there been a noticeable change at the paper?

A: The Daily News, especially since we have new leadership, is really cognizant of race and ethnicity – much more deeply than they were before – and how key that is to the paper in telling stories. There is sort of a growing awareness of how important (community of color) stories are to the bread-and-butter daily stories that we do and where the two intersect.

Q: Explain “intersect.”

A: Say, for instance, in transportation. Somebody asks, ‘Transportation? Latino affairs? I don’t understand how they’re related.’ I was like, ‘What are you talking about? If you look at public transportation, it’s all people in poverty.’ So I think we’re more cognizant of making those connections of how policy is related to identity and diversity.

Q: How did the paper’s diversity committee come about?

A: We have (workshops) on how to write – but we’re a nimble paper that is short staffed, and we don’t get a lot of time to reflect on the content of the news. I thought a diversity committee would be a good place to do some self-criticism and to push forward some ideas that may be on the back burner because they may not be as important as breaking news.

Q: To put stuff out there.

A: Right, and get people thinking critically. This whole Parity Project and Chips Quinn thing is not solely about getting people of color in the newsroom. It’s also about reflecting on the diversity in the community, how it plays out in everybody’s lives and why it’s important, if it is important.

Q: How did you become the president of CCNMA?

A: I got appointed.

Q: Was it like, there were 10 people standing in a row and everybody else stepped back and you were standing there?

A: No, they called me because I had been a former CCNMA scholarship winner, and they just knew me. I think I helped out every once in awhile.

Q: What keeps you in the reporting game?

A: Because I have a job! I like doing this; it’s interesting.

Q: What have you learned so far about being a reporter?

A: That there’s always more to learn. … There’s never a shortage of stories or ideas. You really have to have an insatiable curiosity. You have to be committed to telling stories and informing people. That’s really your job as a reporter: making sense of things for people. If you’re going to get access to things that you get access to and (if) you can pick up the phone and pretty much get, depending on what paper you work for, whoever you want on the phone – the fact that you can do that is a big responsibility. And it’s amazing. Whoever said you’d be able to do that in life? There are lots of people who are heads of big corporations who can’t do that.

Q: What are your future goals?

A: To win the Pulitzer (laughs). Just kidding. I don’t care.

Q: Why not?

A: Because I just really want to be able to do the bigger stories I have in my mind.

Editor's note: Shortly after this interview was conducted, Rick Coca sent an e-mail informing us that he had been reassigned to the night cops beat at the Daily News. "Rachel (Uranga) recently moved to the day cops beat, so we'll get to hand each other the police scanner at some point in the afternoon."

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