Last week, it was announced that the USC Libraries had acquired the records of CCNMA: Latino Journalists of California, the trailblazing professional association fostering diversity within the news media for more than a half century. Several Los Angeles-area news organizations covered the acquisition, including the Los Angeles Times, USC Annenberg Media, and LAist.
In his report for LAist, Adolfo Guzman-Lopez quoted USC Annenberg professor emeritus Félix Gutiérrez, a former CCNMA executive director who helped find a home for the organization's records at the USC Libraries, about the importance of the collection:
“These archives are not about the past. They're about the present and the future,” said Félix Gutiérrez, professor emeritus of journalism at USC, and a longtime CCNMA-CLJ supporter.
The increase in Latinos working in newsrooms since the group’s founding in 1972 is the product of a push by advocates, he said.
“I think people need to understand that what we see and what we've seen is not progress that happened by itself accidentally driven by demographics or good hearted people,” Gutiérrez said.
The group’s advocacy legacy, one that is not widely known by younger generations, he said, is that it called on news media organizations to hire more staff with Latin American backgrounds to better tell the stories of those populations. And it followed up its training of younger journalists by circling back to the outlets to hold them accountable for change.
For more information about the collection, or to schedule a research appointment, contact USC Libraries Special Collections at specol@usc.edu or (213) 740-5900.