By Tristana Santos
Sunday magazine coordinator, Diario El Universo
Guayaquil, Ecuador
Hosted by the Denver Rocky Mountain News

The Alfred Friendly Press Fellowship has been an incredibly empowering experience for me. After surviving six months in an American newsroom with no casualties to report, but many goals accomplished, I feel I can undertake any assignment when I go back to Ecuador.

This fellowship made me look at journalism from a higher perspective. And what I found is that we share the same basic standards. “Journalism is the same thing all over the world,” one of my mentors said when I told him I doubted I had the skills to cover a story. “You ask questions,” he said.

It wasn’t hard for me to adapt to my host newsroom because I had the same principles about reporting the facts, being accurate and finding both sides of the story.

However, even though we do the same job, I wish Ecuadorian newsrooms could work with the balance of efficiency and passion I’ve seen at the Rocky Mountain News.

These are difficult times for the American press. A current of patriotism has blurred the waters where reporters fish for news every day. American reporters, on a personal level, debate whether they should support their troops and lift the spirit of the families that have relatives in the trenches, or question their government’s reasons for sending young men and women to war. Many do both.

I think this dilemma shows a value that is embedded in American journalism: it’s all about people. And because it’s all about people, anyone can relate to it.

American newspapers are not only about big issues like healthcare, but also about how the closure of a family clinic will affect patients emotionally because they had seen the same doctors all their life; not only about crime, but also about portraying the victims as humans beings with virtues and flaws, even if they are drug dealers or prostitutes; not only about the war, but also about how a 21-year-old G.I. that just got back from Iraq looked at his baby girl for the first time, knowing he had just two weeks to hold her before he had to go back to the madness of being a convoy gunner.

These, as other stories I was assigned during my fellowship, are about normal people living their daily lives or experiencing extreme conditions. That’s one of the principles I’m taking back home: to write more stories about people and fewer about issues.

I also learned it’s not enough to report people stories. It’s important to profile complex human beings without labeling them.

One of the hardest assignments for me was to write the portrait of a prostitute who was murdered by a serial killer. I was asked to interview her family. At first I thought it would be disrespectful to call the victim’s mother and ask her how her daughter became a drug addict and a prostitute. But then the police reporter said to me: “This girl was more than a just a prostitute, she was someone’s daughter, sister and mother. Tell her family we are going to write a story about her, and in addition to her arrest records, we’d like to include a description of the woman they knew and loved.” So I did, and they talked to me. I think the story was fair.

Something I have enjoyed in my time here is to see how stories that for an Ecuadorian newsroom would be small or less important are written with the same enthusiasm and care as hard news. I’ve seen an experienced police reporter happily change beats to cover higher education. A city hall reporter decided he liked to write about kids, so he changed beats to cover local schools. A long time general assignment reporter and book author also covers wildlife in Colorado.

I learned there are not small stories or small beats. There’s nothing irrelevant about the environment, education or children. And this gives me hope because I was never too exited about covering the “Economy” or “Politics,” which are the most prestigious beats in my newsroom.

A newspaper is a reflection of the many beliefs and attitudes that shape a community.

Another technique I’d like to apply when I go back home is doing more follow-ups to stories. My first impression was that editors here fell in love with stories and wouldn’t let them go. Then I learned there’s much more to it, it has to do with the belief that individuals have the power to modify aspects of their community.

The coverage of the Columbine high school shootings is an example. It’s been four years since that happened, and there are still full-time reporters digging out the case, trying to find answers and clues that, in the end, might help prevent another shooting.

To write a follow-up is to report how things have changed since we first published the story. I guess in Ecuador we don’t do as many follow-ups because we don’t really expect things to change.

If journalists don’t trust their community’s ability to improve and change, that attitude will reflect in their coverage and will influence the readers’ assumptions as well.

I understand it’s hard to have positive expectations in an unstable environment. We elected a president in 1996, overthrew him in 1997; elected another president in 1998, overthrew him in 2000; then, in 2002, elected a military and former coup leader.

In Ecuador there’s a sense that things don’t always work as they should, and that if you have enough power (be it monetary or military), you can have things your way and avoid the rules.

Writing follow-ups, even if it is to say nothing has changed, prevents people from forgetting exactly what brought us to where we stand today. Informed people, with a perspective of the past, make better decisions.

I believe the American press has developed these techniques because of the need to interpret a culturally and ethnically diverse society with a great ability to adapt to change. Through these stories, readers realize how much they have in common. In order to tolerate each other we first need to know each other. It would be wonderful if this same approach was used to cover international news, but it’s not; at least not yet. That’s the next step and the next challenge for the American media.