"Independent Journalism: Making a Difference and Making a Career"
a discussion with Michelle Garcia

Monday, February 2, 2009
3 p.m.
CMA 5.160 (LBJ Conference Room)
Free and open to the public

Writer/filmmaker Michelle Garcia will discuss the choices she has made in her journalism career, as she has combined independent reporting and filmmaking with work at mainstream media outlets. Can young journalists pursue a career that allows them to pursue serious public-affairs journalism that contributes to social justice? Garcia will reflect on her experiences since graduating from the University of Texas at Austin with a journalism degree in 1996.

Garcia is the director of "Tell'em Who You Are: In Defense of Land and Family," a documentary film about the Border Wall currently in development. She is a producer with Independent Sources, a television program about New York's ethnic media airing on City University of New York television. Before joining CUNY, Garcia completed a Knight fellowship to conduct media training in El Salvador through the International Center for Journalism. As a radio producer, Garcia made numerous public radio documentaries on subjects such as AIDS on the U.S. border and child-labor exploitation in post-Katrina New Orleans. Among the stories she wrote for the Washington Post was her 2008 essay that inspired this film project.

The event is sponsored by the Senior Fellows honors program of the College of Communication and [check on Journalism cosponsorship]. For more information, contact Robert Jensen at (512) 471-1990 or rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.