Biography

 Eduardo Gonzalez was born in Laredo, Texas, but was raised in Mexico. He grew up in a border town; exposed to different countries, languages, ideologies, and traditions. This bi-national exposure helped to shape his cultural identity by making him aware of what happens in two different places. During his junior high school year, the City of Laredo launched a program called Sister Cities, where they elected one student from every high school to represent Laredo abroad. After a competitive and rigorous elimination process, Eduardo was elected to represent his city and his country abroad. He traveled along with city officials to many cities in northern Spain. This experience expanded his cultural horizons and sparked his interest and curiosity about what happens politically and socially around the world.

Eduardo has two passions in life: journalism and foreign languages. He speaks English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French. His goal is to combine both passions to become a foreign correspondent and work for the growing Spanish media market in the United States. He lived in Mexico for fifteen years, studied in Brazil for three months, served as a missionary in El Salvador, interned at a radio station in Spain for six months, and most recently volunteered in India for spring break.  All these experiences abroad allowed him to interact with people from different cultures and backgrounds and to learn how to navigate across personal, cultural, and linguistic boundaries. After all these wonderful experiences, he realized that he wants to focus on international reporting for the rest of his life.

Going as a missionary to Central America sparked Eduardo’s interest in broadcast journalism. He realized that a journalist can be a powerful tool that can help the community. He witnessed the people’s hardships, exploitation, corruption, unfair salaries, and their inability to make their voices heard. He decided he wanted to convey that unheard voice, face the corrupt politicians and businessmen, and ask hard questions, to then report what really happened to inform the people.

While Eduardo studied in Spain, he took journalism courses in Spanish at a regular Spanish university. There was a course in particular that tested his theoretical motivation for being a foreign correspondent. The course was called “international journalism.” This course, which he later realized was a senior level journalism class, was taught by a professor who worked as a correspondent in the Middle East for the EFE news agency. Most of his Spanish classmates were seniors. Therefore, the professor demanded more from the class. The professor made them learn and spell correctly the complete names of all the presidents and prime ministers of the most important countries in the world. In addition, Eduardo had to learn the names of the presidents of the European Commission, Parliament, Council, UN, NATO, IMF and the names of all the governors of Spain. Eduardo decided to set some time aside to really learn the names and, after a rigorous semester, he managed to learn all those names. He felt proud of himself for being able to recognize all the presidents every time he watched the news. The professor also shared his experiences as a foreign correspondent and what Eduardo learned reiterated his interest for international journalism.

In addition to the journalism classes in Spanish, another factor that tested Eduardo’s decision about continuing pursuing this career was his internship at a radio station in Madrid. It was a small and local radio station. Therefore, his supervisor taught him how to do everything, from how to write news in Spanish for the radio, to how to broadcast and speak correctly on the radio. They sent him to cover press conferences, rallies, protests, taught him how to make phone interviews, and how to operate the station’s equipment. This hands-on journalistic experience abroad reiterated his passion for international journalism and made him realize that he wants to keep doing it for the rest of his life.

The growing number of Latinos in the United States has been forcing the American news industry to focus more on this particular community and to listen to what they have to say. Latino journalists play a significant role not only because some of us might speak a second language and can communicate with more people, but also because we as Latinos bring so many different cultures, traditions, and ideologies from our  countries of origin that allow us to tell so many distinct stories in alternative ways. 

Journalism currently faces challenges that are reinventing the way information is delivered and Latino journalists are not invulnerable to such changes. On one hand, the emergence of blogs, Facebook, or YouTube, serve as tools to facilitate news distribution. On the other hand, these new tools can potentially turn against our profession. Currently, anybody can create a blog or post videos online. Nevertheless, not everything that appears online is journalism because bloggers cannot discern newsworthiness as well as professional journalists do. Therefore, while many mainstream media outlets debate whether or not newspapers will survive, Latino journalists should concentrate mastering the emerging multimedia tools, so once the recession ends, we as Latino journalists can demonstrate society our value and competitiveness in the news industry.

Eduardo is currently in his junior year in college majoring in broadcast journalism and Latin American studies. He believes that his multilingual abilities, experiences abroad, previous internships, and technology skills will make him a competitive job applicant in the near future and a great representative of the new role that Latino journalists are having in the news industry.