Gente de NAHJ: Melissa Macaya has many origin stories
Ask Melissa Macaya where she calls home, and she will answer with a prepared list: The mid-Atlantic, or maybe Texas, Venezuela or Washington, D.C.
“I have many hometowns,” said Macaya, a bilingual journalist and longtime member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
Her ability to fit in almost anywhere and to feel comfortable in a range of different environments has defined Macaya’s life as well as her extensive journalism career, which has brought her to CNN — both its English and Spanish iterations — MSNBC, NBC News, Univision and The Washington Post.
Born and raised in Venezuela, Macaya developed a taste for journalism from a young age as she watched massive demonstrations break out in the early 2000s. Soon, her family moved to the United States, and her family settled in the San Antonio area.
Her father noticed an ad in the San Antonio Express News for an NAHJ-sponsored scholarship banquet in New York City. And so, off they went.
Her pursuit of journalism brought her from that banquet hall in New York and her family’s home in Texas to the nation’s capital, where she pursued a graduate degree at Georgetown University.
Her varied experiences, she said have given her the “passion to tell the stories,”
“At the end of the day, what are we doing as journalists, we’re trying to report the truth,” Macaya said. “We’re also trying to reach and inform an audience.”
Olivia Montes is a senior at Washington College, where she has studied communications and media, political science and journalism, editing and publishing. She is a news intern at Delaware State News and hopes to pursue a career in print journalism, though she has recently started a podcast at her school radio station. Reach her on Twitter @MontesLiv.
