News Worthy : Federal Cuts Prompt Residents, Journalism Students to Worry About Fate of Nation’s Only Paper Devoted to Housing Projects

Roxana Cornejo lives in a purple cinder-block apartment behind black bars and screens that cover the doors and windows.

Outside, mangled swings are wrapped around a bar that used to support playing children. For 17-year-old Cornejo, the Imperial Courts housing project in South-Central Los Angeles has been home for the past three years, and she says it’s a tough place to grow up.

“I don’t want to see young people live like I’ve lived,” she said.

That’s why she wants to be a journalist--to bring change to her community.

She is one of 10 students who recently completed a six-week journalism class taught in conjunction with the Resident’s Voice, the nation’s only newspaper devoted to government-funded housing developments. The free quarterly newspaper has a circulation of 12,000 within the city’s 21 housing projects, and the most recent summer issue held a four-page insert filled with stories by young journalism students such as Cornejo.

At her two-story apartment complex, Cornejo said she sees black-Latino racial tension, joblessness and theft--problems that motivate her to write.

Robbery has affected the Centennial High School junior personally. Several months ago, Cornejo’s mother was mugged as she walked to pick up her three sons from school. A man lunged out of the bushes and dashed off with her wallet, leaving her unharmed. With journalism, Cornejo said, it’s possible to take a stand against robbery and other such problems.

“A journalist can change the world if she wants to,” Cornejo said with tears in her eyes. “A journalist can do more than a politician because a politician doesn’t live with the people. I have lived this. And I want to help the rest.”

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The class helped Cornejo and others learn how to draw information from sources during interviews and then compose stories. Students discussed their articles in workshop-style classes twice a week at the Pueblo del Rio housing project in South-Central.

The students ranged in age from 9 to 18 (excluding one older adult), and wrote about subjects such as the opening of a park, the naming of a public safety director and a Junior Trooper anti-drug parade.

Cornejo pieced together a story using her tape recorder about a 4-H club celebration of African American history month. She wrote her article in both Spanish and English for the multilingual paper, which also carries two one-page sections in Cambodian and Vietnamese.

“A journalist speaks for the people,” she said. “There are many people who don’t like to tell their problems, and this makes them silent. . . . A journalist must persuade them to speak and not fear what they say.”

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Journalism has been Cornejo’s dream since she was 7 years old, living in El Salvador. In 1990, she came to the United States, where her family applied for political asylum and later received it. Cornejo’s mother wanted her daughter to have better opportunities through education, but Cornejo soon saw that many of the problems of her war-torn country were the same as those of the inner city in Los Angeles. The poverty struck a nerve.

“That which affects somebody else affects me,” she said. Economically speaking, Cornejo is better off than some residents. She has a job at McDonald’s. Her mother saved to buy her a car. Her stepfather works on an assembly line making poles. But Cornejo feels deeply for less fortunate residents, and journalism allows her to do something about it.

Her vehicle, the Resident’s Voice, began to be published in April, 1993, with the goal that it might one day be produced entirely by residents. Today, residents’ bylines can be seen on more than half the articles and photographs.

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But it is unclear whether the Resident’s Voice will survive long enough to be completely resident-written and edited. The Housing Authority received a grant of $400,000 from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to publish through 1995. Money remains, but the paper’s editor, Hugo Garcia, is unsure how the paper will survive after this fiscal year if federal budget cuts swipe money from HUD.

“Yeah, I’m worried,” Garcia said. “It doesn’t look good.”

Garcia said the Housing Authority realizes the newspaper is an effective tool for communication with residents about new policies and procedures. It’s also the community’s voice. And if the paper is to be run by residents, Garcia said it must provide training to young journalists.

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In the class, students were asked to share how they found ideas for their stories. They helped each other decide on interview questions and critiqued each other’s writing. The course’s teacher, Mike Cardenas, imparted nuts-and-bolts elements of newswriting and offered advice about the more nebulous skill of deciding what is news. He also gave advice for life.

“One thing I told them--which is a cliche--is that a writer always writes. If they have a desire to write, they have to keep at it. That’s the only way they’re going to get good,” said Cardenas, a 38-year-old part-time employee of the Housing Authority. He told students that writing is a tool to help them move toward their goals.

That’s how it worked for Cardenas, who grew up poor in Boyle Heights, where gangs and drugs dominated the lives of young people. Cardenas escaped through reading, and later worked as a journalist for 15 years with various Eastside community newspapers.

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When he decided to teach the course in May, 1994, Cardenas was in the hospital being treated for lymphoma, a life-threatening cancer that attacks the body’s lymphatic system.

“I thought that with the little time I had left in this world, I wanted to teach others what I had learned,” said Cardenas, whose cancer is now in remission.

From Cardenas, Cornejo learned to hone her written voice.

“It gave me new opportunities to talk,” she said, “and to help others talk.”