A Conversation With: Antonia Gonzales and Sarah Gustavus
New Mexico journalists talk cross-media collaboration, how to better inform communities, and accidental solutions journalism.
Longtime journalists and New Mexico residents Antonia Gonzales and Sarah Gustavus are well acquainted with the traditional narratives often associated with New Mexico: severe poverty, dire alcohol and drug dependency issues, the state’s unflattering yet stubborn spot at the bottom of many reports measuring childhood outcomes. Gonzales, a news anchor and producer for the radio show National Native News, and Gustavus, producer of the New Mexico PBS show New Mexico In Focus, have each told their fair share of stories about the grim facts.
But ask either of them to start listing ways the communities they cover are responding to their problems, and out comes a font of under-reported ideas. Gonzales and Gustavus are super-collaborators, regularly co-reporting stories for radio and TV, and they cover the state’s slow, incremental and sometimes experimental progress as much as its failures.
Today, both are contributing journalists to State of Change, a collaborative project of 10 New Mexico newsrooms that will spend the next six months investigating how rural communities in New Mexico are engineering a more resilient future and building the economic, infrastructure and civic capacity rural places need to stay relevant into the next generation. The project is supported by High Country News magazine and the Solutions Journalism Network, with funding from the LOR Foundation.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
SJN: How do you each think of your roles as journalists today?
Antonia Gonzales: Since I primarily focus on native communities, I see my role as a journalist as bringing indigenous voices to the air in different tribal communities, not only here in New Mexico but across the country. From grassroots people to tribal leaders, to native organizations, I try to get the native voice out there, on stories that may not be covered by other news outlets.
Sarah Gustavus: Our number one job as journalists is to inform. What that means to me is to provide information to our audience in New Mexico that folks can use for discussion in their communities and for civic engagement if folks want to get involved… We want to make sure people have good information that they can act upon in whatever way they want to engage in their community.
SJN: How do you see solutions journalism fitting into your role as a journalist?
SG: As a journalist in general, but specifically in New Mexico, I was really excited when I first heard about this model, because we cover some of the same issues year after year after year in New Mexico. I think lots of communities also do that, where you have the same persistent problems. To inform our audience about things that are working locally, or ideas from other places that could be brought here and adapted to New Mexico’s unique history and culture, there’s so much potential in that, to better inform our audience by using the solutions model. Because just to tell people that there’s poverty, or just to tell people that we have these problems… They already know that. [With solutions journalism,] we can provide people with information that’s more useful, that they can act on, or use as a starting point for a discussion either with their community or politically.
SJN: Antonia, how did you first come across solutions journalism, and what was your first impression?
AG: I started learning about solutions journalism about a year ago, from working with you and Sarah doing different collaborations. A lot of our stories have at times already followed a similar track, where instead of always reporting on the negative, we’re also looking at what people are doing in communities to address certain problems. We’ve done a lot of stories on young people in Indian Country making a difference in their communities. We did a lot of reporting on Generation Indigenous. I did a story from a conference called Unity, where a group of kids in Phoenix decided to take on an issue, and they proposed an ordinance to their tribal council.
SJN: Sarah, what about you? Is there an example of a story that you think fit the solutions journalism mindset before you worked with SJN?
SG: Yes, in a collaboration I did with KUNM [public radio in Albuquerque] we did reporting on child abuse prevention. We have these cases every year of terrible abuse that leads to the death of a child. And we felt like those were really important, and were getting a lot of coverage. But we knew from the numbers that there were a lot more kids that are abused and neglected, and that has an impact on young people as they’re growing up, and connects to all these other issues we cover, like education outcomes for kids and different mental health concerns across the state. We found this program that had data from several years, called Nurse-Family Partnerships, and we looked at it as a model for early intervention to prevent child abuse. It’s more expensive than other programs, because a registered nurse comes and interacts with families over several years. But we got at why it was successful, and what it might take to expand that. That was a collaboration where we did a radio feature and a TV feature, and we did an hour-long call-in show.
Now, I am looking at some things that are happening in San Antonio, Texas, which is demographically similar to New Mexico. I’m specifically looking at outcomes for kids, children and families, trying to see if there were some things that worked in San Antonio. They were early on investing in early childhood education. It’s a great time to talk here in New Mexico about what they’ve seen in San Antonio, because it’s still up for discussion about increasing the investment for the State of New Mexico’s early childhood programs.
SJN: Antonia, I want to ask you about the stories you’re working on now?
AG: Sarah and I are doing a collaboration [with support from the Center for Health Journalism at University of Southern California Annenberg] on health and wellness in indigenous communities in California, New Mexico and Arizona, looking at what some of the grassroots people are doing, what tribes are doing, and what different native organizations are doing to use cultural components to address mental and physical health. There’s a lot of discussion about native health care, and our stories are about what are people doing on their own, local level to compensate for their own health care, and taking their health and well being into their own hands.
SG: Some of the issues we’re covering in this series have been covered a lot before by other reporters. We know that there are big health concerns in native communities. But what we felt like wasn’t getting enough coverage were these community-led initiatives to address those concerns. It’s a difficult thing to measure. How do you measure the impact of bringing in cultural activities along other services and counseling? We’re finding that there is a way to demonstrate that these models can work, and can start to address long term concerns in native communities. It’s exciting to take that further, and not just do another diabetes story.
Antonia Gonzales, anchor and producer of National Native News, is a citizen of the Navajo Nation and grew up in Arizona and New Mexico. She received her Bachelor of Arts Degree in Mass Communication and Journalism from the University of New Mexico and minored in Native American Studies. Antonia is also a contributor to New Mexico in Focus on New Mexico PBS. She is a recipient of the 2016 NAJA Richard LaCourse Award for her reporting on the Gold King Mine waste spill and the 2015 Native Public Media Excellence Award. Antonia lives in Albuquerque with her husband and two sons. You can follow her on Twitter @antoniajen14.
Sarah Gustavus is a public media producer based in Albuquerque who currently oversees the weekly news program New Mexico In Focus on New Mexico PBS, which covers the top news stories each week in New Mexico and the Southwest. Previously she worked for the Native American-owned media company Koahnic Broadcast Corporation, where she led production of Native America Calling, National Native News and Earthsongs. She has reported and produced radio stories many other national programs, including All Things Considered, Latino USA, Weekend America, Making Contact, Tell Me More, the NPR newscast and various documentary specials. Follow Sarah on Twitter at @sarahgustavus.
Are you a journalist who wants to learn how to do solutions journalism? All the tools you need can be found in the SJN Learning Lab.
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