Daniel Hernandez

[Peter Farruggio <pfarr@cal.berkeley.edu>]

Daniel Hernandez is an independent journalist 
with some interesting inside views on 
multicultural Los Angeles.  He did a commentary 
on NPR today, Jan 22, 2007, about racial 
discourtesies exhibited toward Black folks by 
some Latin immigrants, available as audio

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6944968

Here's a blog site for his 2006 columns
http://danielhernandez.typepad.com/daniel_hernandez/2006/12/index.html

From there, you can link to this story on the 
cluelessness of the LA Times about the different 
Latin cultural groups in their circulation area

http://www.laweekly.com/news/news/shades-of-brown/15235/

Finally, here;'s an interview (below) in which he 
describes the rampant bias of mainstream 
media.  He seems to be aware and concerned about 
the assimilationist dilemma facing second/third 
generation Latinos: join the racist mainstream, 
or stay real and forge alliances with African 
Americans and other oppressed communities?  For 
that, I think he's an important voice.  Check him out.

Pete Farruggio



Daniel Hernandez interviewed
Kevin Roderick
http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2006/08/daniel_hernandez_intervie.php
The young reporter (he's 25) who left the Los 
Angeles Times this year for the LA Weekly (and 
did a well-received 
<http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2006/02/first_thing_thursday_2230.php>profile 
of Gustavo Arellano and 
<http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2006/03/chicano_all_stars.php>took 
heat for his unromanticized coverage of the South 
L.A. farm story) answers questions from Adrienne 
Crew at 
<http://www.laist.com/archives/2006/08/28/laist_interview_daniel_hernandez.php#more>LAist 
about the switch and his view of ethnic politics and divides in L.A. Excerpts:
Why did you move from the Los Angeles Times to 
the LA Weekly? How are the jobs similar and different?

I owe The Times lots. They taught me so much. 
They gave me freedom and room to work, and pushed 
me to push myself. Everyday the people there 
amazed me, their talent and drive. But The Times 
has a very clear, very rigid tradition on how to report the news.

Shortly after I got there, I started having these 
long, tortured thought sessions with myself about 
my participation in the MSM. I saw how the people 
and places the paper chose to cover were 
automatically political decisions because for 
every thing you chose to cover there is something 
you chose to not cover. I started realizing that 
the mainstream style on reporting the news that 
most papers employ is not really concerned with 
depicting the truth, but concerned primarily with 
balancing lots of competing agendas and offending 
the least amount of interests as possible.

I saw how so much was looked at from certain 
assumptions and subtexts, and a very narrow 
cultural view. When I raised questions about such 
things, I was told we were writing for a 
"mainstream reader," which I quickly figured out 
is basically a euphemism for a middle-aged, 
middle-class white registered Democrat homeowner 
in the Valley. From where I stand today, I had 
very little in common with this "mainstream 
reader" and I didn't care to be in this person's 
service. I wanted to talk across to people, not 
up or down to people. I had to get out. So I 
thought, why not experiment? Try different forms? 
Laurie Ochoa and the editors at the LA Weekly 
said, 'Go ahead, abandon rote objectivity and 
embrace the subjective lens through which we all 
see the world­Just report it all out.' It was ON.

The jobs are basically the same: go out there, 
report the story, think about it a lot, write, 
turn it in, get edited, learn from it, and start 
all over. It's been a real challenge. The Weekly 
is more challenging. At The Times I was just 
challenging the institutional and cultural 
barriers of an ultimately very conservative 
place. That was exhausting, and not very 
fulfilling. At the Weekly, there's all this 
freedom, and that means you have to be more careful and more thoughtful.

[skip]

Is Los Angeles still a segregated city and how?

Yes and no. The geography makes it easy to 
declare L.A. is segregated, but I think L.A. is 
really quite integrated, more than a lot of other 
cities I've seen. At the street level, everyone 
pretty much gets along and goes about their day 
like people do all over the world. At the edges 
of the city's cultural nodes, where the different 
cultures meet, interesting hybrids happen: in the 
music you hear out the windows, in the food, in 
the storefront signage, in the clothes people 
wear, in the colors of people's skin. For the 
most part, I think racial tensions in L.A. are 
exaggerated and media-fueled and politicized, but 
that doesn't mean they aren't real. Maybe I'm 
naïve, but isn't everyone everything by now? 
We're in L.A., we have access to and interact 
with the entire world, because the entire world 
is here. I just don't see how everything comes 
down to race. People are more than the sum of 
their ethnic heritage and the color of the skin. Just ask them.

[skip]

What types of graft and dirty dealings do you see 
go on in our local government? Is it just an LA 
thing or a California thing or a national phenomena?

Mostly I follow the juicy and slimy stories dug 
out of City Hall by my colleagues at the Weekly. 
It's part of the lore that dirty dealings are in 
the city's political DNA. Can't even begin to 
ruminate on an explanation for that. Maybe it's 
something in the water, or in the "Water & 
Power." For me, it's just interesting to see how 
the city's rising Latino political stars­I like 
calling them the Mexican American Princes­are 
morphing into politicians like any other 
politicians anywhere else, in any other period. 
They just happen to be brown. We'll see if they 
can come up with something transgressive at the 
upcoming National Latino Congreso, but I'm not holding my breath.

Monday, August 28 2006 ?