This event will be available for streaming on October 20th, 12 pm on our YouTube channel.

Journalist

Emir Olivares has worked since 2003 as a reporter at La Jornada, one of Mexico's most important daily newspapers, and is particularly dedicated to topics such as human rights violations, migration, corruption and foreign affairs. After he exposed drug deals tied to organized crime on the campus of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) in Mexico City in June 2017, he received threats that he would be assassinated if he continued reporting on the issue. He was immediately pulled from covering anything related to the university, after 10 years on the beat. Even so, in December 2019, his apartment was broken into and Olivares was again threatened in connection with the earlier reporting. He was forced to leave his home, just before the pandemic hit, and spent more than a year unable to write under his name at La Jornada as a protection measure. To this day, Mexican authorities have not made any arrests in either incident, and Olivares remains in a government security program with the protection of bodyguards.

Professor of Professional Practice of Journalism

Laura Castañeda

Laura Castañeda, EdD, an award-winning professor of professional practice in the USC Annenberg School of Journalism, has been a member of the faculty since 2000. Before joining USC Annenberg, she taught at Temple University and worked as a staff writer, editor and columnist for The San Francisco Chronicle, The Dallas Morning News, and The Associated Press in San Francisco, New York and Mexico. Her freelance work has appeared in The New York Times, TheAtlantic.com, and Columbia Journalism Review magazine, among others. Her scholarly articles have appeared in Journalism and Mass Communication Educator and Journalism Studies.
She teaches a range of undergraduate and graduate courses focused on reporting, writing and diversity.
In 2019, Castañeda was awarded the Barry Bingham Sr. Fellowship by the American Society of News Editors in recognition of an educator’s outstanding efforts to encourage students of color in the field of journalism.