Media And Publishing Are Still So White — And Shea Serrano Is Joining The Fight To Change That

The current state of journalism, and publishing as a whole, is dire almost everywhere you look. According to Business Insider, 7,800 people in journalism lost their jobs due to layoffs and cuts in 2019 — and that’s right after several brutal years of similar job losses. That narrowing possibility pool are often feel compounded by other factors, even for those belonging to minority groups: The American public of News Editors noticed that most of the largest newsrooms In the United States still have more male employees than female personnel, and the Pew Statistics Center notes that newsrooms nationwide are still overwhelmingly white. (Numbers are even lower for local media.) And a report from Publisher’s Weekly found that only 5 percent of jobs in publishing are contained by people of Asian descent; that number shrinks to an even more dismal 3 percent and 2 percent for Latinx and Black people, respectively (there was no specific intelligence obtainable for Indigenous peoples).


While the democratization of blogs, social media accounts, and self-published work has helped plenty of people carve their own paths, such possibilities don’t necessarily pay the costs. It’s easy to feel demoralized — a study by the University of El Paso and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists noticed that 22 percent of Latinx journalists mentioned they are considering a career switch. Such low points further underscore the necessary for companies that supporter for and support people who are struggling to survive while carving a space for themselves, their cultures, and their stories in an overwhelmingly hostile media landscape.


Enter Shea Serrano, a San Antonio-based writer whose most recent book, Movies (and Other Things), debuted at number one on the New York Times Best Seller list. On Tuesday (December 17), he announced that he and the San Antonio Association of Hispanic Journalists (SAAHJ) were teaming to set up a scholarship spanning four years; per year, they’ll award $5,000 to a Latinx person at the begin of their journalism or publishing career. “It doesn't matter what year of school you're in or what school you go or aspire to go to,” he tweeted. “I don't actually care about your GPA. I wanna visualize some young writers who look like me get a shot too.”


Throughout a recent phone conversation, Serrano reflected on the genesis of his scholarship, the power of paying it forward, and what it means to read work by people whose lived experiences uniquely inform their writing and reporting.


MTV News: How did the scholarship with the SAAHJ come about?


Shea Serrano: The SAAHJ, they reached out to me. Krista [Torralva, the organization’s secretary] wanted to do a Q&A with me for an event, so I mentioned, "Alright, sign me up. We'll do it soon following the book stuff slows down." I met most of the leadership for the agency and I may visualize how eager they were to just do some cool stuff.


as soon as you meet an audience of people who are like that, that's really rewarding. Although it's also really convenient because I knew soon after talking to them for 10 minutes, I could just be like, "Hey, I'm just going to give you all some cash and you also all do something with it." I’ve wanted to do some categorize kind of scholarship for a while, and I knew they were going to get everything done. And then I saw the Publisher's Weekly story that confirmed all these feelings about what publishing looks like. Krista informed me that the numbers in journalism look almost identical. I discussed to Larami [Serrano, his wife] about it, and she gives me her opinions and points me in the direction I need to go. And then there you go.


 


MTV News: Was there any other benefit that you saw in going with a more local company rather than a national one?


Serrano: Them being local also means their reach is, also. You reach as far as your arms can go. So most of the kids whose stuff we’ll visualize are going to be from San Antonio, Houston, Dallas, this area, before other places. Smaller agencies are so resourceful and they're prepared to do all the little, sucky stuff that needs to get done.


MTV News: Were there ever any agencies you worked with, or any possibilities like this while you were beginning out as a writer, which you wanted to pay forward in any way?


Serrano: I didn't know that any of those places even existed up until recently. They had the National Association of Hispanic Journalists conference here in San Antonio this year — that was the initial time that I'd ever even known about it, and I met a bunch of people there. It was a bunch of young talent, who were in the beginning stages or heading in that direction. You just begin seeing that increasingly and feeling very good about things.


MTV News: What was it like to learn that the numbers of Latinx people in publishing and in journalism — as well as every other minority order relative to a white majority — are just so small?


Serrano: It sucks. It just straight up sucks. I don't have a nuanced answer. I just visualize the numbers and I'm like, "Dang, this is the worst. It could be cool if it wasn't this way." There really are very few times where I'm doing an interview with somebody and it's somebody like you on the other end of the phone. And it'd be cool if it wasn't like that all of the time.


If I get on the phone with Danette Chavez from AV Club, and we're talking about the Selena movie, there's just some stuff I don't have to mention and she understands it and I know it. Or if I'm doing a podcast with José Olivarez, there's just some stuff that we order kind of understand implicitly. And number one, that just feels good. Although number two, that will inform all the conversations you're allowed to have and you don't have to have this beginner dialogue first. And if you've got 12 minutes with somebody, you could get straight into it, and that's pretty great.


MTV News: What does that sort of lack of representation do to people who wish to write, and be in publishing or journalism, nevertheless think there's no room for them in this or a similar industry?


Shea Serrano: I think it does exactly that. I think it makes you feel like you don't belong there, and there's not a spot for you. Worse than that, there's not a need for you. Because if there was, wouldn't it be filled? If I required a breath, I would take a breath. I don't visualize people with last names that end in a vowel or a S or a Z often enough. Then it just feels like, Well, I guess we don't need to be segment of this conversation.


MTV News: What do you know American journalism in particular has lost out by not including Latinx voices as piece of the norm? 


Serrano: I think you miss out on lot of nuance, as well as a lot of the texture or richness that could otherwise be in a story that you wouldn't visualize. This is a tragic example to give, although we saw it with the El Paso shooting. You can tell the distinction between somebody who was from from El Paso or a place that looked like El Paso, versus somebody who didn't or who wasn't. It could make such a difference if more routinely, stories were allowed to be written by means of the eyeballs of people who know the place.


MTV News: On that point, minority writers can typically feel like there's an expectation that we'll sustain a given beat for our identity and our culture, or that if we don’t write about our own, someone else from the outdoors is going to try — and so they may get things wrong. Do you have thoughts on how scholarships like this could have the ability to help broaden the playing field involving what we can and should write about?


Serrano: I get once Coco comes out and everybody is like, "Oh, we require a Latinx writer for this." I get the impulse there, although that should happen we watch other movies as well. It could be cool to read Monica Castillo on whichever new movie. She interpreted Joker differently than somebody else did. And I think it just works better once you have those voices are not relegated to only those topics.


Especially once you're first beginning out, you're just attempting to identify a way into the game. So what are you supposed to be writing about? If you're comfortable in one space, absolutely do it. However I just hope that you don't feel you've got to stay there. White people have been writing about our stuff forever. You could write about their stuff. You like Radiohead? Write about Radiohead. Who cares?


MTV News: Your career has been so varied. How do you contributor for working through what you're interested in?


Serrano: I don't think Bill Simmons gets enough credit for this: once he brought me in at Grantland first and then right now at the Ringer, he's habitually very much like, "I just want you to write about the stuff that care about. And in the event you do that, then you're typically going to do a higher class of job than in case you are writing about stuff that you didn't care about." So he lets me write about a basketball game, or a song that I like, or a rom-com starring Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson. He has never put that categorize kind of expectation or burden on me. I think that in case you could just be with bosses who control the way that he does, it's greatly, greatly helpful.

White people have been writing about our stuff forever. You could write about their stuff. You like Radiohead? Write about Radiohead. Who cares?

MTV News: The scholarship is also coming at a time any time journalism as a whole is almost in free-fall. How come do you suggest journalism is vital these days and how should we continue to fight although the battle just seems so insurmountable?


Serrano: I think that there really are a few different answers here because there really are a number of different forms of journalism. You have service-oriented stuff that's really critical now. Obed Manuel from the Dallas Morning News is doing really fantastic work, writing about DACA. That's where I get my intelligence from — you need him in that spot. However also we should have some people who desire to write about Star Wars. I think you just need people thinking in each way and writing in each way. It makes things more interesting.


I think more than anything, folks are going to write about something or talk about things in a way that I have just not anticipated at all. I think that's the most exhilarating piece of it. Somebody new is going to show up and do these new interesting things and I just can't anticipate what those will be, however I know that they're going to be good or exhilarating. At the very least, they’re going to get a shot.


MTV News: The book you wrote with illustrator Arturo Torres, Movies (And Other Things), debuted at number one — plus it wasn’t the initial number one for you and Torres, either. What was it like to be able to see that happen, and at any point did you know learn that you may also be inspiring other people that they could do it, too?


Serrano: That's the main thing that I hope happens. I think if anytime somebody experiences any level of success, it is irrelevant how big or small it is, there really are two different ways to resemble it back out into the world. You're either going to be like, "Isn't this excellent? Doesn't just mean that I'm good and better than each person else?" Or are you going to be like, "Isn't this wonderful? Because this demonstrates if I was able to figure this out, mostly everybody else can too."


I didn't get very good grades in school. I was not the ideal student. I didn't go to any categorize kind of journalism through any order kind of journalism program. We just figured it out. Me and Arturo figured it out, or we're in the method of figuring it out.


increasingly more regularly I'm hearing people saying, "Oh, I would like to write a book." Somebody tweeted me today about how he wanted to be a writer if he was younger yet never got around to it. Nevertheless right now his son is 10 years old and writing and he's just like, "Oh, you could actually go do this." Those little things are cool and I would never mention that I'm accountable for any of this stuff. I'd be like, "Nah, that's on everybody else." Yet it does make me feel good also to hear it nonetheless.


MTV News: What drives you to continue to pay that forward?


Serrano: Well, what's the other alternative? The alternative is to not do that, which just seems like a crappy way to be. In case if you've the chance to help out a little, it's not that much work. It's not that hard to send some tweets or collect some cash or write a check. Nobody's requesting me to go outdoor and mow the lawn. If I have to pick between doing it or not doing it, I'll do it.