The Los Angeles Times is creating a new section devoted to race, immigration and multiculturalism in company with Jose Antonio Vargas, a journalist who is also an undocumented immigrant.
The partnership, to be called #EmergingUS, is a departure for the newspaper because it gives equal power to Vargas.
Austin Beutner, the publisher and chief executive of the LA Times, said that because Vargas lacks citizenship, the paper cannot hire him directly. But, he added, “we can become a business partner with him”.
Vargas described #EmergingUS as “a multimedia platform that, through articles, original videos, shareable data and graphics, will focus on the intersection of race, immigration and identity and the complexities of multiculturalism”.
Race isn’t just about white and black, say Vargas and Beutner, and immigration isn’t just about the border. The new venture will try to capture those complexities.
While Vargas has been an immigrant activist for several years, he has been a writer and reporter for more than a decade. In 2008, while at the Washington Post, he was part of a team that won a Pulitzer for the reporting of breaking news.
Vargas moved to the Huffington Post in 2009. After he revealed his undocumented status in a 2011 essay for the New York Times magazine, he created a non-profit group called Define American aimed at “elevating the conversation” about immigration.
The group sought to share stories from contributors who are undocumented, thereby attaching sympathetic faces to the fractious immigration debate.
Vargas also directed and starred in a documentary about his experience, “Documented,” which was televised by CNN last year. He is now working on an MTV documentary about whiteness.
#EmergingUS will include other staff members, some of whom may work directly for Vargas’s production company.
Beutner emphasised that Vargas is coming on board as a journalist, not an activist. “The point of view” of the venture, he said, “is that this is an important topic to be talked about. It’s not meant to be advocacy, and it won’t be advocacy.
“But the mere fact that we’re telling more stories will change, we think, the way people view the topic”.
#EmergingUS will exist primarily on the web, but some of the work will eventually appear in the printed version of the paper.
Since being appointed as publisher last August, Beutner, a former investment banker, has spoken of “unburdening” his journalists from print formats.