Bee welcomes Asian American, Latino issues reporters as part of Report for America initiative
Two journalists will join The Sacramento Bee newsroom starting this June, helping to boost coverage of Latino policy issues at the state government level as well as the Sacramento region’s Asian American and Pacific Islander communities.
The two reporters come by way of Report for America, a nationwide initiative within a nonprofit news organization called The GroundTruth Project.
Report for America, which selects journalists to join its reporting corps who are then assigned to local news organizations across the U.S., on Thursday announced its list of 225 reporters who will be placed across 167 newsrooms this summer and report for at least one year.
Among those 225 are Ashley Wong, who will cover Asian American issues in the Sacramento area; and Kimberly Bojórquez, who will cover Latino communities in California for The Bee’s Capitol Bureau.
Wong graduated from UC Berkeley in May with a bachelor’s degree in media studies. She has worked as an intern at USA Today, the East Bay Express and most recently the Center for Public Integrity. Her coverage has included a broad range of topics, from human interest stories to Silicon Valley business news.
Wong was born and raised in the Detroit area, and she spent the last month reporting freelance for Bridge Magazine, a nonprofit, where her coverage centered on health care and the effect of COVID-19 on everyday life in Michigan.
“I think there’s going to be a lot of stories to tell about how COVID-19 is impacting Asian American communities (in Sacramento),” Wong said. “I don’t think it’s just an issue of how racism is affecting the community.”
Wong said she hopes to examine how existing issues facing Asian American and Pacific Islander communities — from those that are health-related to things like immigration, small business ownership and domestic violence — have been exacerbated by the coronavirus crisis.
Wong’s parents emigrated from Hong Kong, and she says she still visits family there about once a year. She speaks conversational Cantonese and has been a member of the Asian American Journalists Association since October 2018. Her hobbies include “stress baking.”
Bojórquez says she is also excited to cover an underrepresented community she believes is “often misunderstood.” Bojórquez graduated in 2019 from Utah Valley University with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a minor in Latin American studies.
“I’m really excited to join a newsroom where I’ll be focusing on Latino life in California,” said Bojórquez, a Los Angeles native. “When I was in college I started writing for my college newspaper because I just felt that we weren’t highlighting Latino life.”
Bojórquez currently works for Deseret News in Salt Lake City, where she has also reported on Latin American communities.
“When the pandemic hit, we really started to question how underrepresented communities were being affected,” she said, noting that Latin American populations historically have higher rates of some chronic illnesses.
Bojórquez added that it has always been her dream to move back to California, where, like much of the rest of the U.S., “a lot of Latinos are on the front line” during the coronavirus crisis, she said, including industry and manufacturing jobs that have been deemed essential.
Wong and Bojórquez are both set to join The Bee newsroom in June.
What is Report for America?
Report for America selected 225 journalists for the 2020-21 reporter corps, chosen from among more than 1,800 applicants.
It’s a big expansion for the initiative, currently at 59 members, of whom about 90 percent will be returning this summer.
“I guess I feel lucky more than anything,” Wong said. “A lot of my friends are struggling to find jobs right now, and I feel really lucky that I get to keep working and also to keep covering a topic that I’m just really passionate about.”
The near-quadrupling of the corps comes amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, which has created an economic crisis while also representing one of the most sweeping and significant news events in modern history.
“These reporting positions come at a time when local journalism is already reeling from years of newsroom cuts and unforeseen challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic,” Thursday’s announcement by RFA read.
The announcement also says Report for America is developing guidelines “for journalists to work safely in the field at this time of required isolation and social distancing.”
“It’s now crystal clear that the need for trustworthy, accurate, and local information can be a matter of life and death,” said Steven Waldman, co-founder and president of Report for America, said in a statement. “This surge of reporters should help meet this moment.”
Report for America also on Thursday announced a new round of financial support from the Facebook Journalism Project, which recently contributed $2.5 million to the local news campaign.
The initiative uses a funding model in which it pays half of a corps member’s salary, partnering newsrooms pay one-quarter and the remaining quarter comes from locally or regionally based contributions.
Report for America has a goal of expanding to 1,000 total reporters by 2024.
“I’m very, very appreciative that Report for America is placing journalists where there are news deserts,” Bojórquez said.
If you would like to help support and fund Report for America corps members placed with The Sacramento Bee, please consider making a contribution here, at FundJournalism.org.
This story was originally published April 23, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
