Posted on 05/21/2003 7:39:03 AM PDT by PARodrig
Much has been written about Jayson Blair, the young, talented, African-American journalist who brought shame to the New York Times by fabricating facts and stealing the work of others.
But I've seen hardly anything written about Macarena Hernandez, the young, talented, Latina journalist who first brought suspicion of Blair's plagiarism to light.
I know her well. I am her mentor.
In 1997, the summer before she and Blair were summer interns in a program for minority journalists at the New York Times, she worked as an intern at this newspaper, with me as her guide.
Her story needs to be told.
Not only because it was her article that led to Blair's tragic fall. (He lifted her words about Juanita Anguiano, the mother of a missing soldier, and Macarena's editor at the San Antonio Express-News asked for an apology.)
More important, while Blair's story is one of tainted promise and ambition, Macarena's is one of a talented young woman who made very different decisions concerning her life and career.
I was impressed with her the moment we met.
A gifted young writer, she pulled herself up the ladder rungs of the American Dream.
A daughter of Mexican immigrants, Macarena worked with her parents and seven siblings in the fields of California, hoeing cotton and picking grapes as a migrant farmworker from childhood until she was 15.
She once told me that her father's only goal for her back then was that she land a job in a building with air-conditioning.
Luckily, teachers at her hometown high school recognized her potential and encouraged her to consider college. She had a hard time persuading her parents that it was a worthy pursuit. But they finally agreed to let her go.
She worked her way through Baylor University, and then earned a master's degree at the University of California at Berkeley.
Blessed with a natural gift for storytelling and a relentless drive to achieve, Macarena proved herself to be a fine journalist here and at the Times.
And just like Blair, she was asked to join the staff of the nation's most prestigious newspaper after completing the internship there.
She was thrilled, and I was thrilled for her.
Two days before she was to begin, her father, Gumaro Hernandez, was killed when a truck hit his car. I remember the telephone call and the stunned devastation in Macarena's voice.
What now?
Her mother, Elva, needed her, and she was the only unmarried daughter without other family responsibilities. So instead of taking the best job of her life, she moved back to the tiny town of La Joya, Texas, and accepted a job teaching English to remedial students at her old high school.
"I was so angry," she told me this week. "Because not only was my father taken away, but my career was completely derailed."
The editors at the Times told her she could always come back, and she wrestled with the decision daily.
But she decided to stay close to home, even after her mother got back on her feet, because she'd learned that family was more important to her than a Manhattan byline.
In April 2001, on her father's birthday, she began working as a reporter for the San Antonio paper.
Robert Rivard, the editor of the Express-News, has called her una joya - a jewel - and an example of the sort of talent that a top-notch affirmative-action program can discover.
Which, I believe, is a key point that has been lost in this ugly swirl of public accusation, deceit and contrition.
Blair and my friend Macarena traveled similar roads, up to a point.
But it's Blair's self-destruction that has lodged itself in people's minds. It's his fall that has prompted critics of affirmative action to say: See what happens when you establish special programs to help minorities achieve?
To them, I hold up Macarena's story. And mine. And those of hundreds of honest, hard-working journalists of color who go out every day and do affirmative action proud.
Blessed with a natural gift for storytelling and a relentless drive to achieve, Macarena proved herself to be a fine journalist here and at the Times.
And just like Blair, she was asked to join the staff of the nation's most prestigious newspaper after completing the internship there.
It’s sad that this talented young lady wasn’t allowed to be herself rather than being seen as a trophy catch for the Times. She also had a master’s degree, which I believe Mr Blair did not. I wish her well.
Every wedding she attends will probably give her flashbacks.
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