San Antonio’s nonprofit newsroom Texas Public Radio has chosen Ashley Alvarado to succeed former President Joyce Slocum, who died in March after battling cancer.
Slocum led the station for 10 years, leading it into a new era by connecting with the community through events and pushing the news organization into podcasting.
Meanwhile, Alvarado was collecting the extensive media experience that would craft her into the next leader.
Alvarado had been working in California for the past two decades as a reporter, freelancer, community engagement and engagement journalist, and most recently as the Vice President of Community Engagement and Strategic Initiatives at LAist, an NPR station part of Southern California Public Radio, where she worked for 12 years.
She’s starting as CEO during a challenging time for public media with fundraising sources drying up and the editorial staff’s recent announcement to unionize.
Alvarado, who identifies as Asian Latina and Scandinavian, will be the first person of color hired to lead the public news radio station.
Still in the packing process, she plans on moving her family to San Antonio in the days before Thanksgiving. She’ll start her new role at TPR on Dec. 2.
Q: How did your career journey lead you to Texas Public Radio?
A: “I grew up in Oregon. It’s funny because I’ve now spent half my life in California, and yet there’s so much of me that comes from … growing up in Oregon.
I went to college to study journalism and I was really, really fortunate in that I had an internship with the LA Times Magazine that translated to some contract work, and then I was hired by a San Antonio native, Oscar Garza, when he started a magazine, Tu Ciudad Magazine. From there, I worked in magazines, I worked doing freelance.
Then one of my college professors said … The California Watch, they need someone to do engagement, they don’t know what it is, but they’re looking for someone awesome and I think you should talk to them.
My imposter syndrome was so very high, and I was like, ‘You know what? I’m gonna go on vacation.’ The executive director of that effort actually found me on MySpace or Facebook … And it ended up being the first job I had in engagement journalism, which really wasn’t a thing.
So we [started] thinking about what information people need to know to be their own advocate. Who is most affected by an issue? Not telling people how to think, but it’s equipping them to make their own decisions.
This 19-month-long investigation looking into California schools and whether they would withstand an earthquake. Those questions came back to, well, the children. Children are the most vulnerable … while we had the opportunity to grow awareness among adults… we really had an opportunity to teach children to be safe in a moment like that.
These thousands of copies [of coloring books] amongst many languages were produced all over not just the state, but the country.
In 2012, I started working at LAist. … We went from being a team of one doing engagement work to being a team and then a department … which became a part of the DNA of the organization, with everything from participatory projects to centering community members questions and we build voter guides, partnership work, work with ethnic language media.
Q: What motivated you? What connects you to your mission?
A: I grew up in a town that was not diverse.
My sister and I really grew up being “the other.” From a really early age, I loved journalism. Especially local news, [but] I never saw my experience reflected. I fell in love with journalism, despite the way that journalism worked for me or didn’t work for me … There’s so many ways that we have the power within journalism to make it more accessible in the sense that it’s reflective … [Even] teeny tiny things that signal somebody’s place in an audience.
Q: What’s special about San Antonio to you?
A: I really thought I was a lifer at LAist. I love that organization, but this was something that just spoke into me. It’s hard, because you see the enthusiasm from the team … This is a place where people can have a great experience.
One of the reasons that I chose TPR was that … It has a physical space for convening. I happened to visit TPR last year for the Public Media Journalists Association conference and saw it was a space built with community in mind.
In the job profile, it talked about needing a leader who is outward-facing and really excited to support and equip the organization and the team members. I love thinking about professional development, I love thinking about how you can support a culture of belonging in an organization.
People consume information in different ways. If we want to, as an industry or as an individual organization, it requires listening.
It’s not hoping for relevance, but designing for it, so it’s story selection, it’s how we write stories, and where people find stories; it can be our website, it can be our mobile site, app, livestream, broadcast radio, a live event, flyers. It’s really just thinking how we can get that kind of agility, while also recognizing the importance of making the work sustainable and how do you do the work in a way that people feel sustained inside an organization.
Q: What will you do to bring your own twist into this role? Will you create a lot of change or do things differently?
A: You can have a map of where you want to go, but you’re not going to be successful unless you … [figure out] what are some of the things they’re excited about, what are the things that are possible? There are two things that are what this oganization has committed to for the future, like more partnerships and really thinking about how it cannot just be for San Antonio, but of San Antonio.
I’m really excited to work with colleagues to see what makes sense and what’s possible.
Q: What’s your long-term strategic vision or approach for Texas Public Radio?
A: Definitely looking at how to embrace being a multi-platform organization. We have the incredible physical space and have had a history of strong reporting, so I think a lot is possible. Thinking more about digital, and then making that culture of belonging, recognizing that it’s really an important part of the future vision. We need to be a place people want to be.
Correction: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of former President Joyce Slocum’s name, and also to correctly refer to Alvarado’s years of experience.
