The Center for Community Media at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism has a new Latino Media Initiative Director, and it’s Jesenia De Moya Correa.

With the appointment, De Moya Correa is the first Dominican-American to hold the position since the center was founded in 2012. 

Its mission is to serve news organizations that provide essential local coverage for populations whose voices and issues are often underrepresented in mainstream media. Since it was founded, the CCM has served as a hub of information, resources, and training aimed at increasing the sustainability of this particular news media sector. 

This new role represents a homecoming for De Moya Correa, as she is an alumna of the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, having earned her master’s degree in Spanish Bilingual Journalism from the school. 

“The J-School has always been a second-second home to me,” said De Moya Correa in a statement. 

She made quite the mark during her tenure in graduate school.

Newmark Journalism School Dean Graciela Mochkofsky and her predecessor as CCM director describes De Moya Correa as “a stellar member of [its] inaugural class of bilingual journalism students.” 

De Moya Correa minored in health and science reporting while at CUNY, and became one of 13 journalists chosen to participate in the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing’s inaugural National Science-Health-Environment Reporting Fellowships.

In 2018, she joined the Philadelphia Inquirer as the first journalist dedicated to covering Latino communities in the Greater Philadelphia region. A year later, she launched El Inquirer, an online news segment that expanded the newspaper’s offerings for its Spanish-language audiences and provided service journalism and community reporting for Latinos within the region. 

She also served as one of the masterminds behind the Communities and Engagement desk at the Inquirer. 

De Moya Correa will utilize her experience and impact as a journalist into her new role, in which she will be responsible for developing national programming that paves the way for the growth of the Latino media ecosystem in the United States. 

In addition, she will spearhead the production of the Latino Media Summit, a major annual event that brings Latino journalists and supporters together from all over the nation.

Mochkofsky noted that she is eager to see what De Moya Correa does with the Latino Media Initiative and how she reinvents the Latino Media Summit. 

“Jesenia brings a much-needed community-based understanding of the Latinx population’s information needs,” she added. 

As director, De Moya Correa will also lead the training, research, fundraising and reporting necessary to work alongside the directors of the Asian Media and Black Media Initiatives, Kavitha Rajagopalan and Cheryl Thompson-Morton, respectively. 

As she embarks on this latest journey in her career, De Moya Correa hasn’t lost sight of the work that needs to be done, as each step along the way has helped her get to this point.

“At this moment, when the Latino communities of the U.S. are considered of vital importance for the post-pandemic resurgence both here and abroad, is when we need to focus on the overall sustainability of Latino news media, which widely influence the day-to-day lives of our people,” she said.