UTEP bilingual course aims to improve border journalism.

The University of Texas at El Paso has partnered with El Diario de El Paso publisher Publicaciones Paso del Norte to provide master’s-level coursework in border journalism, the first of its kind along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The coursework, taught in both English and Spanish, is in its first semester and currently enrolls about 25 students, all working professional reporters and editors with El Diario de El Paso or El Diario de Juárez.

UTEP President Diana Natalicio this week recognized Osvaldo Rodriguez Borunda, president and Publisher of Publicaciones Paso del Norte, for his initiative and work in establishing the program.

“We are here to celebrate a partnership designed to enhance journalism on the border,” Natalicio said. “But what this is really about is an investment in people, in their professional development.”

The border journalism program is financed completely by Publicaciones Paso del Norte, which publishes El Diario de El Paso, El Diario de Juárez and El Diario de Chihuahua. The courses are currently open only to Diario reporters under the partnership.

The program aims to elevate the level of expertise of Diario’s journalists and provide them with the bilingual and bicultural skills needed to cover social, economic and political border issues. The course also focuses on the different practices, procedures and standards in news gathering and reporting that exists between Mexican journalism and that of the United States.

“Our objective through the creation of this program is to provide informative, specific and targeted coverage to this border region, which, from our perspective, is very different than the rest of Mexico and the rest of the United States,” Rodriguez Borunda said. “We consider the Chihuahua-Juárez-El Paso region to be one sole economic and cultural entity which requires its coverage be handled as one community with very individual aspects.”

This course is representative of the leadership role the university and the Department of Communication have taken in responding to the increasing demand for Spanish-language journalists across the nation.

In 2003, UTEP’s Department of Communication launched the Ruben Salazar Spanish-Language Media Program, which takes advantage of its border setting and bilingual, bicultural undergraduate students to prepare them for careers in Spanish-language media. Salazar, a Texas Western College (now UTEP) graduate and famed journalist, is recognized as a martyr in the Chicano movement of the 1970s.

For more information at http://www.utep.edu/comm