I applied to the Knight-Wallace Fellowships at the University of Michigan … and didn´t get in

I applied to the Knight-Wallace Fellowship for Journalists at the University of Michigan for the first time and unfortunately, I was not accepted.

I was told that: “This year the competition was intense and available fellowships are limited. The number of applications has risen sharply over the past few years, making the selection process increasingly competitive and difficult”, which I completely understand. 

This was an interesting process, from which I´ve learned a lot. I want to thank all the people who helped and encouraged me, by sharing the essay I summited with my application,

Maybe someone has a suggestion I can use when I reapply next year!

Thank you in Advance!

Personal Statement – Javier Mota

In the summer of 1998, I was the El Nuevo Herald’s sports editor and was having dinner with friends and found myself sitting next to a South African heart surgeon. 

 “You really have an important job,” I told the heart surgeon. “You save lives.”

“That´s true,” he replied. “But, I do it one at a time, and I am not always successful. On the other hand, your job affects everybody, always. And you have to be right every time. You can´t publish the wrong score on a soccer game, ever!”

The doctor’s insight caused me to reevaluate the importance of my work as a journalist: When a doctor makes a mistake, it gets buried. When a journalist makes a mistake, it gets published.

That notion has stuck with me for nearly 20 years, though technology and a changing media landscape has eroded some of the power traditional media has held. If I have learned anything in my career, it’s that journalists must continually adapt to technology while create new ways to tell stories and hold those in power accountable. The essence of what we do has not changed, but the way we do it continues to evolve quickly. 

I have been really lucky at catching the “last (and first) good years” at every big media outlet I´ve worked for.

I started at United Press International (UPI) after going back to Mexico from Maur Hill Prep School in Atchison, Kansas - my parent´s last resource to straighten me out and get me to graduate from High School.

Unfortunately, they ran out of money due to yet another financial crisis in Mexico and I went back home before graduation. Somehow, that unexpected detour set me on the path of my journalism career.

My father, who was also a journalist and even owned a small newspaper for about 10 years, sent me to UPI´s office, with the hope that the general manager at the time, Pieter Van Bennekom, could keep me busy while I decided what to do next. I was 21 years old. 

On Monday, January 10th, 1983 I walked into UPI´s office, and Mr. Van Bennekom quickly informed me that the operation was divided into four areas: administrative, photography, newsroom and technical support. 

“You are not an accountant, photographer, writer or an engineer, but let´s see what we can do,” he said before putting out another Camel– yes, this was at the time when you could still smoke in an office - and going out to the small newsroom to introduce me.

“Good morning everybody, this is Javier and he is going to help you in any way he can,” he said, and quickly went back to his office.

I then met correspondents Jane Bussey, Fred Kiel, John García and Bruno López and started doing small tasks like answering the phones, replacing rolls with seven layers of carbon copy paper on the printers, helping install a parabolic antenna, going to the Post Office, getting food and making coffee.

A few weeks later, I started doing English to Spanish translations, phone interviews, preproduction work and, eventually, covering my first events: press conferences, soccer games and live concerts. 

By September, I enrolled at the Carlos Septién Journalism School on a 2-year technical program to learn the basics of broadcasting and photography, which I completed while working at UPI.

In my 5 years there, I covered a wide-range of events, from Presidential elections to the 1985 Mexico City earthquake and the 1986 FIFA World Cup. I also wrote travel features and worked on special assignments like following illegal immigrants from Central America on the Mexico-US border. 

When I was ready to be transferred to the Latin American Bureau in New York at the end of 1986, UPI went bankrupt and my promotion was cancelled.

While in salary negotiations with the Miami Herald Publishing Company, I was offered the position of Deputy Bureau Chief for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean at Agence France Presse (AFP).

Since my goal was to work outside Mexico, I agreed based on the condition that I would be assigned to another post abroad in two years. They accepted and, to start me on the international circuit, I was sent to Washington DC for a couple of months.

But after two years, the promises evaporated and, once again, I was stuck in Mexico. I called Tony Espetia, an editor I met while in UPI who was now working at El Nuevo Herald in Miami. He offered me a job on the spot. 

I moved to Miami in August of 1989 and started working as a copy editor. Within a few months, I was named Main Editor, in charge of signing off on the front page to the presses every night. 

When the team now known as the Miami Marlins was about to debut on the Major League Baseball´s National League for the 1993 season, I took the job as beat writer, despite the fact that I had never covered a live baseball game in my life. 

I went on to become the only reporter to cover every single game of the inaugural season and stayed on the beat until Sunday, October, 26, 1997, when the Marlins defeated the Cleveland Indians 3-2 in extra innings of Game 7, for their first World Series title. 

The next week, Major League Baseball commissioned me to write its first official Spanish-language commemorative World Series Book, which meant I had to go back to the newsroom for the first time in five years. 

That´s when I noticed things were changing, in particular with the incorporation of new technologies.

In January 1998, while already at my new job as Sports Editor, I was assigned to go to Cuba to cover the visit of Pope John Paul II. I went undercover with my Mexican passport, since the Cuban government didn´t approve any visas for reporters from The Miami Herald / El Nuevo Herald.

I spent 12 days doing interviews on the streets of Havana, writing the stories by hand, and faxing them to Mexico City, from there they were relayed to Miami by my father and sister.

On my flight back to Miami, I read an ad in the American Airlines magazine for an Executive MBA Program at the University of Miami, and, though I never graduated from high school or went to college, I thought I could do it. I registered for the program soon after and graduated in 2001.

By then, I was already at Univision Communications Inc., where I was hired to run the sports division, but managed also to cover the automotive industry and launch the network’s first online presence. 

After the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany, I was assigned to cover cars full time. Then, in 2008, the world changed. Traffic numbers went down, along with car sales and pretty much everything else in the US economy.

I was surprised I stayed on until June 1st, 2011. I was helping in many other areas of the editorial operation, but by then, my salary was too high for the new circumstances and I was let go.

Soon after, I launched Autos 0-60 on Sirius XM Radio, a bilingual show with interviews, safety-buying tips and car reviews. I also started working for About.com and eventually for Autoproyecto.com, the largest stand-alone Spanish-language automotive site in the US.

In 2013, I started my own production company – JAM Media Productions - mainly to become the Spanish-language content provider for NASCAR. 

Today’s journalist must be able to adapt to not only the newsroom, but also the rapidly evolving world around them. It requires a journalist to constantly evaluate how consumers will use news, how that information needs to be delivered today and tomorrow. Relevancy becomes especially important and valuable to journalists in an era of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and #fakenews. The response from readers, viewers and listeners is instantaneous and often vicious.

When I saw a Facebook post with “An opportunity for accomplished, mid-career journalists eager for growth and deeply committed to the future of journalism,” I thought, “I can do this,” just as I thought about the Executive MBA Program at the University of Miami almost 20 years ago.

But now, I need to do this. 

Over the last few years, even though I have learned new skills, I have also watched my traditional journalistic background become uprooted in many ways. I know that the automotive industry, which has changed more in the past 17 years than it did during the previous 100 will continue in evolve. It also offers a great opportunity to keep telling stories though the format and manner in which those stories are told will also continue to evolve. 

That is why I find the opportunity as a Knight fellow so inspiring, providing me with the opportunity to reinvent myself again and remain relevant and valuable.

Even today, I hear the echo of the heart surgeon’s words and I tell myself “you have to be right, every time.”