An interview with Félix Gutiérrez, educator, author, advocate

By Paul Gutiérrez, CQS ‘93

He is called “the Padrino” of Latino journalists – the Godfather.

Félix Gutiérrez, known across the nation for paving the way for hundreds of young journalists, has perhaps done more than anyone to bring journalists of color, particularly Latinos, into American newsrooms.

Even so, some 40 years ago the industry shut its doors on him. In terms of qualifications, he had more than enough to break in – a bachelor’s degree from California State University-Los Angeles, a master’s from Northwestern University, a doctorate from Stanford University. But as a Chicano from East Los Angeles, he couldn’t land a newspaper job.

He turned disappointment into inspiration.

Seeing a wrong that needed to be addressed – a stunning lack of diversity in the nation’s media – Gutiérrez employed the values he learned from his parents, both journalists themselves. He blazed trails. He became a founding member of the California Chicano News Media Association and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. He started the CCNMA’s Journalism Opportunities Conference in Los Angeles, the largest job fair for minorities on the West Coast.

Gutiérrez, now 65, has collected awards and honors like Imelda Marcos amassing shoes. This while writing or co-authoring five books. Among his other titles: professor of journalism and communication at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Communication.

On the wall of his home office in Oakland, Calif., hangs a stunning sign, circa 1940s, from a Texas restaurant: “No Dogs; No Negroes; No Mexicans.” There is also an article about him written by Rubén Salazar, his hero, a journalist who died when a tear gas projectile fired by a sheriff’s deputy hit and killed him at the 1970 Chicano moratorium on the Vietnam War in East Los Angeles.

On a personal note, Gutiérrez, who splits his time between Oakland and South Pasadena, has had a profound impact on my career. In 1999 he dropped my name on the right people, and soon I was working at the Los Angeles Times.

We are not related, but we always greet each other with a hearty Primo! — Spanish for “cousin.” He made me feel like more-than-family when I interviewed him at his Oakland Hills home overlooking San Francisco Bay.

Meet Félix Gutiérrez, the “Padrino”

Paul Gutiérrez: What does it mean to you when people call you the “Padrino of Latino journalists”?

Félix Gutiérrez: It’s an honor, of course. It means that some people look at me as having played a role in the early stages, maybe a barrier-breaking role. But I also have my own role models. I think it’s more of a legacy — a continuing legacy rather than (the idea that) nothing was being done and all of a sudden this pioneer comes out and starts making things happen.

How does a kid from East L.A. get to walk the hallowed halls of the Fourth Estate?

I never really walked them. I’m from a transitional generation who could get the education but didn’t find the opportunities in journalism that we found someplace else. In 1969 it was easier for me to get a job as an assistant dean at Stanford than to get a job at a newspaper.

You said in your NAHJ Hall of Fame acceptance speech that your one dream was to become reporter. How tough was it to give up that dream?

I never gave it up. At 40, I was a tenured associate professor in journalism at USC. I had never had any professional newsroom experience. There was a pool of minority journalism faculty members who were heavy on the graduate degrees, but light in the professional experience. So I applied for an internship. They gave me a chance at the Pasadena Star-News, the paper I delivered when I was a kid. I worked for the summer and they nominated me for the Pulitzer Prize. I didn’t win the Pulitzer. But at least I was in Pasadena for a year. I had the career in my 40s that I thought I would have in my 20s.

How did you come to co-author with Clint Wilson and Lena Chao the book “Racism, Sexism, and the Media: The Rise of Class Communication in Multicultural America”?

Experiences build on themselves. When you have a dream denied or lost, often the tendency is to lower your expectations. I took the opposite route. In ’67- ’69 I was in L.A., doing a lot of press relations. Only two Chicano reporters ever showed up for anything I did for English-language media, East L.A. stuff. One was (Rubén) Salazar. The other was Joe Ramirez.

The other reporters who’d come out would bring baggage with them – their perceptions of the community; their perceptions of what was wrong; their stereotypes. They weren’t bad people. They just didn’t know. They didn’t know the language, the culture, that part of town. I thought well, maybe if I can teach, I can train a new generation. I’ve played a small role in training a new generation of (journalists) who have a broader appreciation of all sectors of a society. The book grew out of that.

How ironic, and rewarding, to have made such an impact on the news industry without having been a full-time reporter.

Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez, who teaches in Texas, once told me that one of the best things that happened to journalism was that I didn’t get a job … The book (Racism, Sexism and the Media”) was the first one that brought together the diverse experiences of different racial groups — Latinos, blacks, Asian Americans, Native Americans. There had been works that looked at individual groups, mainly African Americans. But (there were) none asking What are the similarities and differences between the groups? In that regard, it has helped raise cross-culture awareness and appreciation.

On Rubén Salazar

Paul Gutiérrez: Tell me about Rubén Salazar, Los Angeles Times reporter, then slain news director of KMEX-Los Angeles.

Félix Gutiérrez: He was doing what I dreamed of doing. He covered a side of East L.A., where I spent a good part of my youth. He was covering stories beyond crime and gangs — social issues, giving another dimension to them. I didn’t believe he was Mexican. I thought he must be Cuban, or something. I couldn’t visualize that a Chicano — Mexicano, somebody like me — would have a chance to work at a paper like the L.A. Times.

How did you meet him?

He had been in Mexico for most of the Chicano movement. He came back (to Los Angeles) in ’69. I got to know him in late winter ’69. I worked with Rubén some as a source, pitching stories on pickets, protests, marches, demonstrations, sit-ins, sleep-ins, the stuff we were doing in ’68 and ’69, trying to get more educational opportunity for our people in Chicano studies. In August I took a job at Stanford as assistant dean of students. He called and said, “How come you didn’t tell me you were leaving town?”

This was when Stanford was bringing the first group of Chicano students in. We had a speaker series. One of the speakers, Ralph Guzman, gave a presentation on the Chicano deaths in Vietnam. I sent a copy of the speech to Rubén, and said, “You might like to write a story.” He did. That was the last direct contact I had with him.

He left the paper in the spring to be the news director at KMEX (the Spanish TV station in Los Angeles), but he continued to write a column. Every Friday I’d go into Palo Alto and buy the L.A. Times so I could read his column. When I heard that Sunday that he’d been killed (in East Los Angeles in 1970, during a Chicano moratorium of the Vietnam War), it was a shock.

What did Rubén mean to you?

He was symbol that if you could find a way, you could do it. For my parents’ generation, the battle was to get the education. For our generation – Rubén was about 10, 15 years older than me – it was to get the education but also to get the job. He was a role model who showed that yes, you could get the job and you could do the job.

Diversity and the Future of News:

Paul Gutiérrez: How can diversity in America’s newsrooms help the future of newspapers, especially given declining circulations and ad revenues?

Félix Gutiérrez: General-circulation dailies and network TV are giving people fewer and fewer reasons to watch or to use or to read them. Papers are getting thinner. Viewing on network newscasts continues to decline. (Media) have to reach out to audiences that are growing. In the 1990 and 2000 Census, blacks, Latinos, Asians and Native Americans all grew in percentage and numbers, while the population of whites declined. It puzzles me that the industry that was so quick to adapt to technological change has been so slow to adapt to demographic change. If you want to look at the future, you have to go in that direction. I can’t say this is the key to their future. But if they don’t do this, I can guarantee they won’t have much of a future.

Felix Gutiérrez, journalism professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California and a Diversity Institute trustee, shares a moment with John and the late Loie Quinn at a Freedom Forum dinner during UNITY 2004 in Washington, DC.

How can the so-called mainstream media catch up more quickly to an increasingly diverse society?

Part of it is numbers in hiring and promotion, advancement of people of color in the field, which was the mantra of the Kerner Commission report 40 years ago. But more important, it’s coverage: Reflecting all of the community and all its faces. Things are better now. But if we take out celebrities of color, politicians, athletes, entertainers, then (we have to ask) where’s the regular coverage (of communities of color)? A lot of coverage is either about problem people — people beset by problems or causing problems — or what we call the “zoo stories.”

Zoo stories?

Indian powwows. Chinese New Year. Black history month. Cinco de Mayo. They have all the elements of a good story. They’re positive and they’re prideful. But we shouldn’t be “on display” once a year. Our communities exist all year ’round, not just for show time.

You’ve said that in a multicultural/multimedia society, people will pay attention to the media that pay attention to them. How can that be accomplished without alienating the current base of subscribers, readers, viewers?

I’ve always thought (mainstream media) didn’t give general audiences enough credit for being interested in people beyond their own narrow backgrounds. If you present news well, you’ll maintain the readers you have and you’ll get the ones you don’t have. If it alienates people, then you have to see who it’s alienating. If it’s alienating people of a demographic that’s not growing, well, maybe it does. But if it’s bringing you people from new sectors where the growth is then you’re gaining. Radio is a good example. Stations change formats all the time and lose loyal listeners. But they realize they’re going to gain more than they lose. Newspapers have not had a generation of leadership willing to risk losing some of the past to gain a lot of the future in terms of race.

Do any media outlets “get it”?

I’m not ready to put the flag on top of Mount Suribachi and go out and celebrate. But clearly, for young people getting in now or looking to get in, it’s a lot better than it was 40 years ago. And to see your language, culture or other background as an asset? For us, it was something you had to lose, or at least couldn’t showcase. There are individual editors – Sharon Rosenhause, recently retired from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, and a number of editors working with the Chips Quinn Scholars program over the years – who have gone out on a limb with some people who didn’t go to big-name schools, or who went to big-name schools but were second- or third-tier students. They said, ‘We’ll give this kid a chance, see what they can do.’

You’ve said that the Los Angeles Times has been playing “catch-up marketing, catch-up journalism” with its burgeoning Latino population. Can you explain?

The Times had a conscious decision to make in the ’60s and ’70s as the demography was changing, as the suburbs were growing. They could either chase the readers they were accustomed to reaching to where they were moving — Orange County, San Diego — or they could adapt the editorial product to the people who were now living in Los Angeles. They decided it was easier to chase readers than to adapt the product. They’ve been playing catch-up ever since. They’ve done some very good things – Nuestro Tiempo and the Latino Initiative — but they didn’t sustain the efforts under new owners. If the Times had put out a product in Spanish in the early ’70s, their (former) parent company, Times Mirror, wouldn’t have had to worry about buying half of La Opinion in 1990 and selling later on. So it’s not lack of effort; it’s lack of consistent effort.

Preparing for the “Brave New World”

Paul Gutiérrez: Does journalism education have to change radically to prepare young people for the world of the Internet?

Félix Gutiérrez: Journalism schools need to let students know first of all that technological changes are constant in journalism. The content — to quote the Newseum people — doesn’t change. The delivery method does. So journalism schools need to teach students, yes, it’s changing, yes it’s dynamic, but it’s not new. Students still need to have an understanding of the basics of journalism: Is it true? Is it fair? Is it accurate? It’s (still) get it first and get it right. It might be a faster pace, but it’s the same skills. Also, students need to be nimble and not get married to a particular technology. Even in the last few years, you can see technologies that have come and gone. … This is the best time to go into journalism.

Really? Can you explain?

When I got out (of college), you could be locked out. Where could you go? You couldn’t put out your own paper. You didn’t have any Internet, any desktop publishing, or production capabilities. You couldn’t post on YouTube or MySpace. Now there are more places you can go.

You’ve urged students to establish their own identities while maintaining their roots, taking in other peoples’ experiences and not shying away from differences. How did you come to that conclusion?

I came up in an era when it was “Lose all that.” We were “culturally deprived,” “culturally disadvantaged.” You had to “overcome” being Latino; “overcome” Spanish; “overcome” a culture. There was a little middle ground, but it wasn’t very large. Now the middle ground is bigger. That’s what the goal should be — for people to develop these middle grounds in their own self identities, in their lives. And it’s not all race. It could be religion, culture, lifestyle, sexual orientation, geography, even. You don’t have to lose to learn.

What moment in your career crystallizes your view of success in the business?

It was 30 years ago. I was teaching at Cal State-Northridge. I was about to get tenure. My boss asked me to speak to a group of editors. I really went down with a lot of anger. I just looked at them like, “Man, you’re listening to me now, but where were you 11 years ago? You should have been hiring people like me then.”

But I got over that. Then I went to a program with the Institute for Journalism Education (now the Maynard Institute) in Washington, D.C. I met a lot of people there, Bob and Nancy Maynard, Frank Sotomayor, Steve Montiel, others — real leaders, Jay Harris, Jerry Sass — and became a player on the national stage. I realized that as a professor, your job is not just to study things, write about and document things, but to play an activist role. In order to be proficient or excellent as a professor, you have to be also an activist on the issues. I spent a lot more time in the next 10 or so years with editor groups doing advocacy type things. That was a turning point. For me, that’s been the most rewarding — when you can say you played a very small role in someone’s development, in helping them fulfill their dreams.

What advice do you have for journalists of color just starting their careers?

Aim high, shoot straight and don’t blink. That and hard work will take you farther than you think.

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Words by Félix Gutiérrez

Paul Gutierrez is a senior writer at The Sacramento Bee, writing columns, enterprise and takeout features on sports personalities, trends and teams in the San Francisco Bay Area. He started work at The Bee in September 2005 as the paper’s Oakland Raiders beat writer. He spent the previous six years covering everything from college basketball to boxing to soccer to major league baseball at the Los Angeles Times. He has also worked at the Las Vegas Review-Journal and Sports Illustrated. Gutierrez was a Chips Quinn Scholar in 1993 at The Oakland Tribune and later was an intern at the Orange County Register in the Sports Journalism Institute, which was sponsored at the time by the Freedom Forum. Gutierrez, a graduate of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, co-authored “Tommy Davis’ Tales from the Dodgers Dugout.”