As of March, three recent former Beacon staffers are reporters for The Oregonian:
Austin De Dios (UP ’22),former Beacon editor-in-chief, covers Multnomah County politics (was on the Breaking News/Public Safety Team until recently)
Carlos Fuentes (UP ’22), former Beacon copy editor/sr. reporter, covers Oregon state politics and government
Chiara Profenna (UP’23) covers religion, faith and cultural connections
Carlos was hired in November 2023. Chiara was hired last March. Austin was hired in 2022.
Other Pilot alums at The Oregonian include former Beacon Sports Editor Joe Freeman (UP ’99), Oregonian sports reporter, and Laura Gunderson (UP ’96), director of public interest and accountability.
Eight guest speakers joined us at Beacon meetings this year, and seven of them were Beacon alums. I’ve found that students are especially inspired when they see one of their “elders,” who sat in the very same newsroom years earlier, go on to thrive in their professional lives. They also share specifically how they still use the skills they first learned at The Beacon. Just as importantly, the students hear their candid stories of rejection, failure and tough lessons learned along the way.
I’ve also learned that it’s important to expose students to former staffers working in non-journalism fields or non-traditional journalism. In some cases, these alumni started in journalism jobs for a few years and transitioned to new or related fields. Through them, current Beacon students get a better idea of how the skills they learn at the Beacon are valuable across a wide range of careers. That’s why I’ve started to invite more of those Beacon alums to join our staff meetings.
Finally, one benefits of the pandemic: the ubiquity of Zoom. Most of our guest speakers attended via Zoom, allowing them to “visit” from locations as far as Washington, D.C.
Scroll down to see this year’s visitors.
-Nancy Copic, Beacon adviser
Austin De Dios 2021-21 Editor-in-Chief
When Austin joined our meeting, he covered primarily breaking and crime news for The Oregonian during one of the most tumultuous periods in Portland’s history, at least in recent years. He is now covering Multnomah County government.
Austin DeDios with Beacon staff
Olivia Sanchez 2017- ’18 News and Managing Editor
Olivia (far right in photo), who covers higher education for the Hechinger Report, joined us at Beacon Boot Camp.
Kimberly is a member of the Times Corps. She recently was also chosen to for a paid summer internship through the Charles Snowden Program for Excellence in Journalism. Kimberly will intern as a reporter for Street Roots, an award-winning print and online Portland publication that focuses on social justice and environmental issues.
The Beacon recently won First Place in four categories in the Mark of Excellence Awards given by the Society of Professional Journalists, Region 10 (Oregon, Washington, Idaho. Montana, Alaska). These winning entries now advance to the national competition:
Kimberly Cortez – Campus Reporting (for this collection):
President Robert Kelly has appointed Kimberly Cortez Beacon editor-in chief for the next academic year. Read more about the selection of Kimberly here.
Soon after her appointment, Kimberly hired the rest of the 2024-25 Editorial Board:
This experience was full of firsts. It was my first time ever visiting New York City, my first time attending the College Media Association (CMA) Conference, and it was my first time ever seeing a professional newsroom. I could not believe that my name was among the list of others that were chosen to tour the Wall Street Journal. As we made our way into the News Corp. Building, and up the elevator to the floor the newsroom was located in, I was feeling all kinds of nerves. I knew touring this newsroom was a once in a lifetime opportunity.
Our tour guide, a staffer at the WSJ, took our tour group and seated us in a conference room. As we got comfortable in our seats, he informed us that it was the very room the editors (yes, even the Editor-in-Chief) met in to discuss stories and other important logistics. I suddenly forgot every single question I had prepared and just looked around in complete awe.
We were then taken to one of the most amazing sights of the newsroom was the wall of Pulitzer’s. It was rows and rows of awards with various names of reporters and the stories they wrote. It reminded me of our own wall of awards in our newsroom in St. Mary’s. So many talented students join our staff every single semester, I wonder whose name would be next on that wall of Pulizter’s.
Seeing the newsroom in action had me feeling stunned. It was a Friday, meaning many staffers wouldn’t be in the office. Yet, the newsroom was lively. CNN played on the TVs overhead, several staffers typed away at their desks, and I even saw someone working on the layout for the print issue. I like to think I looked at what my future could look like someday and I can’t want to fulfill my aspirations.
My reality-check was seeing the “Free Evan” tributes. Evan Gershkovich, a reporter for the WSJ, was taken prisoner by Russia for suspicions of being a foreign spy. He was simply doing his duty as a reporter, and yet he faced dire consequences. It has now been a year since his imprisonment. These tributes served as a reminder that the work journalists do is far from easy; there are risks that you must be willing to take. I think this demonstrates that all journalists deserve more respect and acknowledgement for their work.
Tiffany Marquez Escobar is a reporter for The Beacon. She can be reached at marqueze25@up.edu.
As I stepped into my first session (Threading the Needle: Bringing Equity into Fashion Journalism) of the conference, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Based on the name, I knew I would be listening to reporters working in the fashion industry. What I didn’t know is that I would be listening to an editor from Teen Vogue.
Aiyana Ishmael, Associate Editor at Teen Vogue, was an inspiration. She shared her story, how she went from community college, to attending an HBCU in Southern Florida, to then making her way to NYC and climbing the ladder to her current position at Teen Vogue. Just like me, Ishmael is a woman of color and shared her own share of struggles in the industry. Seeing a successful BIPOC woman who is committed to making fashion journalism more diverse gave me so much confidence as a future journalist.
The biggest lesson Ishmael could have offered was how to best promote diversity in a newsroom. She offered 3 main points:
We each hold responsibility as individuals so there’s no reason to be a bystander.
We should be willing to be wrong and even more willing to learn.
Stop saying that you want to “give voice to the voiceless.”
My focus as a staffer on The Beacon has been on DEI issues, but I realized that I never once stopped to ask myself how I could be doing this better. Her talk really stuck to me and changed the way I view and approach stories on campus.
Tiffany Marquez Escobar is a reporter for The Beacon. She can be reached at marqueze25@up.edu.
Like many Beaconites before me, I attended the College Media Association’s (CMA) conference in New York and came back feeling a bit like a new person. Thing is, I’m still the same person — except with renewed motivation and many new ideas, both for myself and for The Beacon.
Motivation comes unexpectedly sometimes. It was by chance (my name was effectively pulled from a hat) that Beacon reporter Tiffany Marquez and I got to visit the Wall Street Journal Newsroom. Standing before the News Corp. tower — and boy, does it tower — I knew I was in for a cool experience. I didn’t know I’d leave the building with as much energy and excitement as I did.
That said, the WSJ tour was also a reality check. I asked our guide — a publicist — what the average editor’s educational background is. His response: an Ivy-League degree, graduate school and more years of experience than I’ve probably been alive.
That’s intimidating. But even still, that alone gave me an idea of what the top rungs of the media ladder look like, and by extension, what I can do to remain competitive in spite of what I now lack. For example, being open to new opportunities, networking (I prefer the phrase “talking to people”) and doing quality work are all within my power — and those are things that could guide me into a successful career in media.
Beyond the tour, I followed my instinct around the conference, attending sessions I thought were both practical and interesting. My first (and by far my favorite) was a session on news design led by Yuri Victor, an editor for The Atlantic. Victor gave an honest, enthusiastic talk on how easily overlooked design features — like font combinations, colors, white space and grids — can either hinder or enhance the reader’s experience with a publication. Less than an hour into the session, I thought, “We need this at The Beacon.” I immediately began sketching design ideas onto a slip of paper. My goal: to make positive changes to The Beacon website before I graduate next spring.
I also went to a session on freelancing, which to me has been a term synonymous with “broke” and “unstable.” No doubt it is for some. But this particular speaker reframed the idea of freelancing for me, getting me to see it as a business, not just a side hustle. I won’t get into the details (there were many), but suffice it to say that I’m far less daunted by freelancing now than I used to be. Same goes for creating my portfolio. A session on e-portfolios took something that was once intimidating to me and made it fun and interesting. Since then, I’ve been playing around with different platforms to create my own website, which I hope to include on resumes and in job applications.
One of the hardest things for writers is when you run into something you can’t totally capture with words. I’ll do my best: The whole experience — from the newsroom tour, to the sessions, to simply walking about the city — was like being at the center of a whirling snowglobe. Everywhere, there was something to learn, to apply to your professional and academic life and to benefit from. My wish is that the Beacon staffers who want this experience can have it. And I hope it will be as invaluable to them as it was for me.
Riley Martinez is Copy Editor for The Beacon. He can be reached at martinri24@up.edu.
New York Times food reporter and cookbook author Priya Krishna, though she doesn’t know me, has made me a much less fearful person. My natural skepticism has made me a good judge of character and a strong student, but it often backfires when it comes to estimating my abilities. I get scared that my ideas are no good, or worse, embarrassing.
Krishna emphasized “cold emails,” a way of making connections — and for me, a way of sparking ideas. Cold emailing might be the scariest thing next to cold calling (even though I’m a student journalist and I’ve made my share of cold calls). But after Krishna’s session, I realized that not seeing your ideas through is a lot scarier than contacting someone on the fly.
It’s inspiring to think that a journalist can do something as creative — and successful — as authoring a cookbook. It goes to show that the work we do in the world doesn’t have to be so compartmentalized. In other words, there’s no good reason why a journalist can’t flex their creative muscles and still excel at what they do in the office.
Since that talk, I’ve been “following my nose,” as I call it: seeking story ideas in unfamiliar places, writing about topics I’ve never written about and cold calling (and, yes, emailing) people for ideas and information. And following your nose is all about losing the fear that holds you back. It’s important to remember that fear developed out of a need to respond to danger and keep ourselves safe; cold calling or emailing won’t kill you, and neither will following through on your ideas.
Krishna’s talk is something I’ll take with me beyond college — because it’s really advice that extends beyond the four years of undergrad. I’ll remember its essence as I move into the beginnings of my career and start my professional life.
Riley Martinez is Copy Editor for The Beacon. He can be reached at martinri24@up.edu.
In my time at The Beacon, I’ve learned to be comfortable in the role of a photographer. While not diminishing my role as an artist and professional in my own right, I’ve grown to shoot for the purpose of journalism and consider myself a journalist as well as a photographer. However, while sitting and listening to the first keynote speaker of the conference, Priya Krishna, there was a point where I caught my mind wandering when I should have been paying attention to the incredible journalists on stage. This is nothing new for me, my mind wanders all the time. But as I look around the room to find something to focus on, oh boy do I find it. As I look at the student journalists around me, I know there are reporters and editors alike, but I also notice photographers, more than I expected to be at the conference. I notice them shooting the speaker while they sit in their seats. I appreciate the dedication, being in New York is heaven for a photographer, and I respect the ability to find frames in a stuffy conference hall. But as I sit there and watch them take their shots, I find myself becoming self-conscious. Should I be shooting this? I took some photos with my phone, but I have my camera in my bag too. Maybe I should get it out? But my camera is loud and will be very disruptive. Then what is my purpose here? If I can’t fulfill my role as a photographer, then what is my place in this journalism session?
And as I sit there, overthinking and questioning myself, I slow down and take a breath. I tune back into what the speakers are saying. At this point, Krishna is talking about paving her own way in journalism and how, especially in food, people of color aren’t as respected or trusted as they should be. This gets me thinking about how I can pave my own way as a photojournalist.
Recently I have been considering the difference between the titles “Photographer” and “Photojournalist.” How does a photographer contribute to the industry of journalism without writing articles? How does a photographer turn into a photojournalist and what does that entail? While considering these things, I’ve applied a new mindset to how I shoot. “Observe like a reporter, shoot like a photographer.” Looking for stories and shooting for picture frames is what I have found to be the most important concept for a photographer to be a journalist. This is how I can pave my own way as a journalist, weirdly inspired by a food journalist’s words. Krishna’s “Food For Thought” keynote, while not geared toward photographers in the slightest, actually helped me get into the right mindset for the rest of the conference.
Natalie Gordon is a photographer for The Beacon. She can be reached at gordonn26@up.edu
UP Beacon staff blog 