Program Description
Event Details
As a part of the 2021 Coronado Community Read, we invite you to join us for a moderated panel discussion on how race issues are reported in the news and the importance of the perspectives of various perspectives. To receive the zoom link for this webinar, please sign up here.
Panelists:
Laura Castañeda, San Diego Union Tribune
LaMonica Peters, CBS8
Max Rivlin-Nadler, KPBS
Moderator:
Dr. Dean Nelson, Point Loma Nazarene University
Laura Castañeda
Laura Castañeda is an award winning, bilingual journalist, producer, blogger, documentary filmmaker, media instructor, and mentor with over 30 years of experience in various platforms.
Castañeda recently returned to industry after retiring from full time academia as a professor at San Diego State University, and San Diego City College. She joined The San Diego Union-Tribune in 2020, as Community Opinion Editor. Castañeda is a lecturer at various local colleges and universities.
Castaneda's has worked in three different news markets (Chicago, San Diego, and Tucson, Arizona.) She held positions such as writer, assignment editor, field producer, reporter and anchor. She spent many years working on both sides of the international border in Nogales and Tijuana, B.C. She won two Emmy Awards for her magazine series, Stories de la Frontera.
In 2008 her first documentary film, The Devil’s Breath was nominated for an Emmy Award and debuted at the San Diego Latino Film Festival. The film was screened at various Colleges and Universities across the United States and on PBS affiliates in Tucson, Chicago, Riverside, and San Diego.
Castañeda is an Alumna of the University of Illinois-Urbana. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English with a minor in Sociology.
She is a member of IRE (Investigators Reporters and Editors), NAHJ (National Association of Hispanic Journalists), SPJ (Society of Professional Journalists) and SPJ (San Diego Press Club.)
Castañeda has served on numerous boards of directors including CCNMA, Latino Journalists of California, and UNITY Journalists of Color.
LaMonica Peters
LaMonica Peters is currently a Freelance Reporter at CBS 8 in San Diego. She most recently worked in Seattle, WA at KOMO News.
She began her television news career in the Mississippi Delta in 2011, after being selected as a Knight Digital Media Center Fellow by the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. In 2013, she was given the Mississippi Associated Press Award of Excellence for a 3-part series on breast cancer that described how the disease had affected her own family.
LaMonica was chosen to be an inaugural class member for the Ida B. Wells Society Investigative Reporter Training. The following year, she was nominated by the New York State Associated Press for Public Service reporting while reporting for Spectrum News in Buffalo, NY.
She’s a member of the National Association of Black Journalists, Investigative Reporters and Editors, and the Ida B. Wells Society. LaMonica also served as President of the UCLA Black Alumni Association from 2010 to 2012.
LaMonica earned a B.A. in Communication Studies from UCLA and a M.A. in Theatre Arts from California State University, Los Angeles. She was raised in Los Angeles and loves Southern California!
Max Rivlin-Nadler
Max Rivlin-Nadler is an investigative journalist whose reporting has appeared in outlets such as the New York Times, the New Republic, the Village Voice and Gothamist. His years-long investigation into New York City's arcane civil forfeiture laws led to a series of lawsuits and reforms which altered a practice that had been taking millions from poor communities for decades.
Since moving to San Diego, he has reported extensively on immigration and criminal justice issues, including the treatment of asylum-seekers along the border, last year's District Attorney race, and the criminalization of homelessness in the midst of California's deepening affordability crisis. A native of Queens, New York, Max attended Oberlin College in Ohio, where he majored in creative writing.
Dean Nelson
Dean Nelson is the founder and director of the journalism program at Point Loma Nazarene University. He writes occasionally for the New York Times, the Boston Globe, San Diego Magazine, Westways, Sojourners, and several other national publications. He has won several awards from the Society of Professional Journalists for his reporting, and has written or co-written 14 books, including 2019’s Talk To Me: How To Ask Better Questions, Get Better Answers, and Interview Anyone Like a Pro. Nelson is a frequent speaker at writing workshops and retreats.
In addition to directing the PLNU journalism program, Nelson also hosts the annual Writer’s Symposium By The Sea, where prominent writers come to discuss the craft of writing. He has a Ph.D. in journalism from Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri at Columbia, and a bachelor’s degree in literature from MidAmerica Nazarene University in Kansas City.