Latinos/as – Maria Lorena Quintanilla, 46

byJennifer Martinez

Maria Lorena Quintanilla is a housekeeper in Austin, Texas, where she has made a living as a housekeeper for 11 years. Stay-at-home orders limit the amount of work she can complete every week, and while her husband’s income helps keep the family afloat, Quintanilla is eager to return to the work she loves. “I do […]

Latinos/as – Kimberly Torres, 25

byJennifer Martinez

Kimberly Torres carries out essential work as a curb-side order packer for a major grocery store in Dallas, Texas. Torres says she’s one of the lucky ones; she has limited contact with customers and her employer provides necessary benefits. With her grandmother at home, she still worries about contracting the virus at work. “I would […]

Latinos/as – Diana Bocanegra, 23

byJennifer Martinez

Diana Bocanegra is a DACA recipient and waitress in Dallas, Texas. She worries that filing for unemployment amid COVID-19 will damage her chances of becoming documented in the future. She also worries her parents will become indebted as small business owners. “Honestly, I can’t see a positive to this yet.”   Return to Latinos/as in […]

Latinos/as – Alejandro Coronado, 22

byJennifer Martinez

Alejandro Coronado is a DACA recipient and furloughed retail worker in Dallas, Texas. Coronado is worried he contracted COVID-19 when he began taking odd jobs alongside his father to secure income. His family is undocumented and uninsured. “It’s frustrating that this is happening and that my family doesn’t have the support that, say, an American […]

Sports Journalists – Mark Skol, 24

byJames Grant

Mark Skol, sports director at WNDU in South Bend, Indiana, talked a lot about covering Notre Dame sports during the coronavirus pandemic, and how he has had to adjust the way he does his job in some ways. He mentioned how he has had to do Zoom interviews with Notre Dame Football Head Coach Brian […]

Sports Journalists – Larissa Liska, 27

byJames Grant

Larissa talked about how her station, WLTZ in Columbus, Georgia, has asked her to cover more news stories during the coronavirus pandemic. She also showed how she has transformed her living room into a makeshift studio for her to report from during this pandemic. Larissa talked about covering Auburn, Alabama and Georgia during the pandemic, […]

Sports Journalists – Amanda Atwell, 26

byJames Grant

Amanda Atwell talked about how her news director at CBS 4 (KVEO in Brownsville, Texas) let her and the other CBS 4 Sports anchor/reporter continue to cover sports during the coronavirus pandemic. She has had to report from her living room, like the other sports anchors/reporters I talked to, and she hasn’t been at the […]

Sports Journalists – Daniel Gotera, 36

byJames Grant

Daniel talked about how he has mostly been reporting from home for KHOU, Houston’s CBS affiliate, since around the time the coronavirus started to spread through the U.S.. He discussed how he has transferred his man cave at his home into a makeshift sports studio. He also mentioned how he has enjoyed doing Zoom interviews […]

Sports Journalists – Jeff Barker, 27

byJames Grant

During my interview with Jeff Barker, a sports anchor/reporter at CBS Austin (KXAN), he talked about how during the coronavirus pandemic he hasn’t been able to go out in Austin and interview as many coaches and athletes in person, so he has had to resort to Zoom interviews. He also talked about how he’s had […]

Latinos/as in a Pandemic

byJennifer Martinez

It is often said that COVID-19 does not discriminate when choosing victims, but as the pandemic unravels into an economic crisis, Latinos/as face unemployment and risky essential work at alarming rates. These are some of their stories.   Return to the Life in a Pandemic Main Page  

Sports Journalists in a Pandemic

byJames Grant

While watching a local newscast one night around the start of the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S., I noticed one of the sports reporters on Tampa/St. Pete’s Bay News 9 was reporting from his living room because of health and safety measures. This caught my attention because I want to go into local television as […]

Life in a Pandemic

byJames Grant, Travis Hlavinka, Lindsey Logan, Jennifer Martinez, Reagan Morrisey, Mildret Orellana, Tehya Rassman, Meredith Schmidt and Maya Vela

The COVID-19 pandemic changed the lives of millions of Americans, including the Spring 2020 students in J362F, Journalism Portfolio. As their final project, some students in one class selected different groups of people affected by quarantines and closures, to learn about their individual experiences of “Life in a Pandemic.” The following categories complete the phrase […]

Transgender Man Finds Community on Austin Woman’s Football Team

byStephen Wagner and Nicole Stuessy

Battling issues of gender identity, depression and an estranged father, Kaelyn Daxton found his second family in a women’s contact football team.

Cedar Park’s Jeremiah Chambers Overcame Long Odds to Achieve Football Stardom at Abilene Christian

byDenise Emerson and Reagan Morrisey

 

Five Weeks – The Rise and Fall of the XFL

byJulian M. Rowe-Cohen and Marcus K. Krum

The XFL professional football league was five weeks into its inaugural season when play was ceased due to COVID-19 in April. The eight-team league, with teams in Houston and Dallas, filed for bankruptcy on April 13. Executives, staff and players from the Dallas Renegades and Houston Roughnecks reflect on the unfulfilled promise of the league.

Sex Workers Struggle as COVID-19 Pandemic Continues

byShelby Woods and Andrew Roberts

Bars, strip clubs and brothels have been shut down as non-essential businesses across the country closed for the coronavirus pandemic, leaving many sex workers out of a job. “It has completely stopped business,” said Mistress Natalie King, a dominatrix in New York City. “There are no in-person sessions to be had.” And unlike millions of […]

UT’s Music Majors Struggle in Pandemic

byRebekah Philip

As a senior music major at The University of Texas at Austin’s Butler School of Music and future student teacher, Alessio Nachtergaele hoped he would be teaching at Westlake High School and Cedar Creek Elementary. Although he continues to create lesson plans, quarantine continues to hinder him in many ways.  “The only music making we […]

Quality Connections in Quarantine

bySamantha Hall

  Austin, a city known for its traffic, high density and crowd-drawing festivals, is closing in on two months of staying home. Public discourse has been inundated with stories of premature death, economic demise and fear. This is not one of them. Human beings are innately social creatures. We crave connections with others. Even introverts […]

Pandemic Upends Latino Lives

byJennifer Martinez

El que no nada se ahoga. He who does not swim drowns.

Growing up in a traditional immigrant household, this six-word declaration proved fundamental. My parents, both Salvadoran natives, imparted its wisdom on their children in response to misfortune— at times as a warning and at others as encouragement. It’s a lesson they learned from years of working long hours at one blue collared job or another, scraping together enough money to renew heftily priced work visas and keep the lights on, and finding a way to remain afloat as immigrants in the U.S.

What Collapse of Oil Prices Means for Texas’ Future

byTyler Lewis

Slack demand caused by the coronavirus crisis on top of excess production translates into a perfect storm for the global oil industry.