I often like to say that The Daily Californian was my real journalism school.
In the spring of 2001, my second semester as a Berkeley student, we had an editor in chief named Daniel Hernandez, or as he was sometimes known among his mates from the paper, “Street.” Having a nickname like that gave him, at least to me, a sort of a respectable rugged journalistic air about him. I never knew much about him, and never had the chance to hang out with him, but he knew who I was at the paper and would say hi to me as he passed me in rough-and-tumble world of young reporters like myself hunched over at glowing iMacs, trying desperately to capture the magic of some Berkeley event in 15 column inches.
That March, like in many years at The Daily Cal, there was some ruckus going on between the paper and the students. This time we’d managed to stir of up some trouble by printing a contraversial ad by conservative writer David Horowitz. In it, Horowitz “proclaimed that slavery was self-inflicted by blacks and that efforts for reparations should be stopped,” according to a Daily Cal article dated March 2, 2001.
Naturally, the paper received tons of angry visits, calls and letters to the editor. But what drew even more vitriol was Daniel Hernandez’ subsequent apology for running the ad.
We got mountains of letters ranging from this:
I commend editor in chief Daniel Hernandez for clarifying one key point: that paid advertisement is compromised speech and therefore falls outside First Amendment protection. Newspapers have an absolute right, for whatever reason, to reject advertising.
to this:
Hernandez should resign because he is an apologist for the forces of political correctness. He is an apologist for many who, while denouncing “corporate journalism” on one hand, seek to silence a controversial (yet non-bigoted) political organization because their views on race relations run against liberal orthodoxy.
I even remember a letter from another journalist somewhere out there saying that by doing this, Hernandez had effectively blacklisted himself from the industry and that he’d never be a successful journalist in the future.
I didn’t ever talk with Daniel about this incident.
But I do remember during the week it went down, there was one night that I was staying late to help put the paper online. Daniel came out of his office to stroll amongst the editors and staff that were hacking away to get the next day’s paper out. In the midst of this back-and-forth and contraversy, Daniel seemed the epitome of cool. It was like he’d come out of his office to take a breath of fresh air, and seemed to be reminded that no matter what hornet’s nest we’d stirred up, there was still a paper to put out, and that were dedicated to that task.
He walked near to the printer, which was centrally located in our newsroom, and casually announced to no one in particular: “I feel like getting donuts.” and then promptly disappeared. Daniel returned a short while later with the signature pink box full of two dozen donuts, easily enough for everyone working that night.
I was thoroughly impressed. Not only did Daniel manage to defuse the situation (and like all Berkeley contraversies, it blew over within a week) but just seemed to be generally confident in his decisions, and overall just keeping his level-headed cool. And he bought us all donuts.
Daniel was only a junior at the time, but he seemed a lifetime away from me. His senior year, while finishing his degree in the spring of 2002, he became a stringer for The Los Angeles Times, and was subsequently hired as a summer intern.
Daniel stayed on with the Times as a reporter, making a name for himself as a rising star. In February 2006 he penned a front-page column one profile of Gustavo Arrellano, better known as the guy behind the OC Weekly column, “Ask A Mexican,” which soon launched the columnist to national prominence.
Then earlier this week I read on Romenesko that Daniel Hernandez had left the Los Angeles Times for the LA Weekly, a hip, smart, alternative local weekly paper.
I knew that there had to be a reason why. And Daniel’s interview about his recent move with LAist.com didn’t disappoint.
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 world—Just report it all out.’ It was ON.
Read the whole interview, because it’s pure Daniel: wide-eyed journalism with class.
My hat is off to you, again, Street. May our paths cross again one day.
Now go read Daniel’s latest piece: it’s about the mustaches of Angelenos.
