Journalists show off their periodista pride at NAHJ with new t-shirt collaboration
Jennifer Serrano and Veronica Vasquez are not journalists, but for them, the news was an integral part of their childhood.
Watching Spanish-language media with their parents was a regular feature of their daily routine. Spanish-speaking journalists like María Elena Salinas would beam into their homes from networks like Univision and Telemundo and became familiar and trusted faces.
Today, they are the proud owners of JZD, a Texas-based clothing brand that focuses on empowering the Latino community by creating merchandise that features positive messages and cultural representation. They’re also responsible for the newest swag at the National Association of Hispanic Journalists’s conference in Hollywood, Calif., this week: vivid blue t-shirts emblazoned with the word “periodista.”
The national organization wanted to collaborate with JZD to create apparel that NAHJ officials said would give Latino journalists the opportunity to showcase their pride in the news industry.
Tanja Babich, ABC Chicago news anchor and NAHJ member, said for Latino journalists, it’s more important than ever to declare who they are to the world. American consumers’ trust in mass media has neared record lows, according to Gallup polling data, and journalists are regularly vilified and dismissed by politicians and other public figures. But, Babich said, journalists — especially those from underrepresented communities — are critical.
Babich said she conceived of the idea for a t-shirt-driven awareness campaign and immediately thought of the queer Latina-owned business JZD, which is based out of Brownsville, Texas.
“We are united in our desire to be better represented in newsrooms,” said Babich at the opening ceremony of NAHJ’s 40th Anniversary convention. “So that all of the stories that we cover, about Latinos, those that affect Latinos, are covered with context and compassion.”
Serrano and Vasquez, who are married, said that agreeing to collaborate with NAHJ was an easy yes. The campaign that NAHJ envisioned aligned with their values.
“We think it’s incredibly important to have Latinos giving us news and having Latinos enter these spaces and relay information to us,” Serrano told the Latino Reporter. “It just hits different when it’s coming from people that you know relate to your life, and I think it has a huge impact.“
Even Serrano’s parents, who work with them in the Brownsville headquarters, took seriously the mission of bringing this campaign to some of the nation’s most recognizable Latino journalists. As they packed the shirts to ship, Serrano said, her mother was careful to package each one with care.
Seeing journalists like Salinas, who both Serrano and Vasquez grew up watching on TV, wear the periodista shirts this week — and display them on social media — has been unforgettable, they said. Serrano even showed her mother a photo of Salinas in the blue tee.
Her mother was thrilled.
“To see these people that I grew up seeing every day on the news wearing something that we created — it’s not entirely real to me,” Vasquez said.
On the back of the t-shirts, NAHJ included its hashtag that has been circulating on social media since its 2016 #MoreLatinosInNews campaign to bring awareness of the lack of diversity in American newsrooms.
The shirts are for sale at the 2024 conference and online. But by the third day of the conference this week, all but two sizes had sold out.
Sofia Mireles-Gonzalez is a fourth-year student at Michigan State University majoring in Journalism with a concentration in Broadcasting. She is interested in covering topics related to immigration and aims to become a bilingual immigration reporter in the future. Reach her at mireles.sofia14 [at] gmail [dot] com or on LinkedIn.
