Telemundo reporter Adriana Macias talks about Spanish-language broadcasting

Written by Valeria Moncada

The Telemundo studio in Centennial, Colorado is a small space. When you walk in, there are three computer-operated cameras in front of a variety of screens, the news anchors’ desk in front of them, to the left a rotating screen for feature pieces, and to the right the green screen for weather situated with the meteorologist’s desk and another screen tucked away in the corner.

At the anchors’ desk sits Adriana Macias, a native of Cuidad Juarez, Mexico and co-host Yesmani Gómez, joking around with each other a couple of minutes before the show starts airing. The meteorologist, Niurma Sánchez, sits at her desk typing away before her segment. At 4 p.m. exactly, the taping begins the anchors getting cues from the producers through their earpieces, which they call el frijol, the bean.

Broadcast journalism is the main way Americans get their news and broadcast journalists are the ones responsible for keeping the public informed. Though English language news can be found on a variety of local and national channels, Telemundo is one of two Spanish language news broadcasting stations in the state of Colorado where almost 600 thousand people speak Spanish.

“For us it is an immense responsibility” Macias said in an interview conducted at the Telemundo office in Centennial in Spanish and then translated into English. “In this community there are people who come to us and they appreciate the fact that we are their news source in Spanish. They feel they have support thanks to us.”

According to The Guardian, the United States is the world’s second largest Spanish-speaking nation in the world with 52.6 million speakers, 41 million of them are native speakers, only Mexico surpasses the Unites States with 121 million speakers. Of these Spanish speakers about 41 percent of them say that they speak English “less than ‘very well’”, according to the US Census Bureau.

“A lot of our Hispanic community feels reflected and we are their only support here. Many topics, for example, covering immigration is very important, a lot of our community are immigrants and they watch us,” said Macias.

Despite the demand for Spanish-language news, Macias admitted they’re short staffed. Even though they are a small network, they don’t have a sports presenter, a fourth reporter, or a second anchor for the 10 p.m. show which leaves Miguel Bedoy as the only anchor. During the 4 o’clock show Gómez is in charge of the sports presentation, something he isn’t a fan of doing. “I mix up the accents” Gómez jokingly admitted, referring to the Nahuatl name of a Mexican soccer team, that he mispronounced on a previous taping. This sentiment was also shared with Bedoy who did the sports presentation at 5:30 after Gómez went off-air.

Broadcast news journalist jobs are also expected to drop by nine percent by 2026 with a loss of 4,500 jobs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median pay for broadcast journalist is $43,490 per year, but in certain states like New York, it is higher. Macias isn’t worried, though.

“Journalism can never die, there’s always news happening and people who need to be informed, it’s just becoming digital,” said Macias, “There’s no robot that can go out and interview people and get the news, it’s impossible.”

Due to the fact that they are not only a small studio with fewer employees, but also how there is always something happening, Macias sometimes spends her whole day at the office. “Journalism is a career in which you live 24/7, when you leave here the news continues, continues, continues, then you have to keep reading. Journalism and news are constants every day, ” Macias admitted.

Macias started working for Telemundo in Denver a year ago, having worked in Corpus Christi, Texas, and Mexico beforehand. She graduated from the University of Texas in El Paso three years ago with a bachelors in multimedia journalism. She says her favorite stories are the ones that show perseverance, people who are fighting every day to achieve their dreams and their goals, the human aspect to the news.

“People are my favorite, it is with whom we work for in the end. My favorite take is to know the stories of each person that allows me to enter their life and that open their hearts to tell me what most afflicts them, what most makes them happy,” she admitted.

Though it took her a while to decide on a career in journalism, she’s glad she did and has been able to pursue her dreams. Macias said that she took her studies seriously, and the people she went to school with who were only studying journalism to be on TV have had little success in the field.

“Journalism is not just going on television or to receive awards, but study journalism because you have a passion for reporting,” Macias advised, “information is very important because it depends on you, if your information is bad, then your community will leave with that negative information. So, you have to be very careful — if you are well informed you can inform the community.”