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The Literacy and Journalism Connection

Salazar, Magda

This is a guest post by Magda Salazar, Literacy Texas board member, in celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month.

My name is Magda Salazar. For the last four years, I have served as a member of the Literacy Texas board of directors. We meet regularly to discuss the state of literacy in Texas. This includes looking at the challenges practitioners face and how our programming can add support and value, identify rising resources and tools and how the organization can leverage its own capacity or position to access those features to design solutions, and we always want to elevate people along the way.

As we close Hispanic Heritage Month, I’m sharing my thoughts on the intersection and impact of literacy and journalism, and when applied, how one does not exist without the other.

I grew up reading Agatha Christie books. Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, Judy Blume, and the Babysitters Club, too. My reading material didn’t come with cultural representation, but the storylines and characters did ask questions and connect the dots, experienced the thrill of the chase in search of answers, and practiced problem-solving and being curious. 

Reading also developed in me the more quiet attributes, such as the role and value of nuance, imagination, care for my fellow human, creativity, exploration, discovery, hypothesizing, pivoting, introducing new elements, and building. Add in a dash of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and the sky is the limit on engagement and practice. 
 
Without literacy, these traits get diminished. And without journalism and practice, these same human traits get lost in translation. These traits get traded in for efficiency, and a means to an end.
 
At a program and education level, we organize literacy in terms of skills, capacity, access, and economic attainment. How much do we think or build in to literacy as connection, visualization, storytelling, imagination, and critical thinking? You know that puzzle that has you follow numbers so that you can get to the hidden design, of a bird, a plane, a flower of sorts? I wonder if people hear each other’s stories with that creativity.
 
I’ve been thinking of journalism as that puzzle. The who, what, when, where, and how each act as the numbers in the design that is not yet complete. How each dot acts is a declarative statement, and the through lines start to reveal the next connector in the story, until together it paints a fuller, more thorough picture. I went on to pursue sports journalism for almost 10 years. Talk about storytelling with numbers! Even sports and sports journalism has its element of literacy.
My commitment to literacy is rooted in my own story. Growing up along the Texas border in El Paso, I benefited from programs that supported reading development from an early age – including Head Start – and went on to compete in poetry, prose, and debate. I know firsthand what access to literacy resources can open up for a child.
 
Every day, in little ways, I celebrate literacy and journalism, for everything the alphabet, words, stories, writers, books, and news provide. 
 
I marvel at the connection both have played in my life, in access and creativity, and in a vocabulary level my kiddo playfully disparages and regularly applies in her own conversations. (Fun story: my kiddo is often asked by her friends to define and clarify words she uses and readily explains. I have even received a thank-you or two (or three) for the vocabulary she now possesses.)
 
It’s also why I founded By the Numbers: Understanding the Impact and Progress of Latino Journalists in North Texas, an independent research initiative documenting the professional experience of Latino journalists in the Dallas-Fort Worth media market. The journalists’ stories, and the communities they serve, deserve to have a space of their own. 
 
So, I elevate literacy and journalism – beyond Hispanic Heritage Month or even Literacy Month. Literacy is every day. Journalism is every day. In English and in Spanish. In French when I get to practice it. 
 
It has been a heavy year, for both literacy and journalism, the practitioners and the journalists, the students and the media consumers, and for the art of the written (or documented and verified) word.
 
But, I see the practitioners who give of themselves to share and grow literacy in others. 
 
I applaud the students who pursue literacy development and growth for themselves, their families, and their well-being. 
 
And I recognize the journalists who expand literacy through their storytelling and information sharing.

Magda Salazar has served on the Literacy Texas Board of Directors for four years. Read her full bio or visit magdasalazar.com to learn more about her work, and click here to see her 2025 blog post, A Letter to the Literacy Texas Community.

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