Carolina Covenant Scholar Patsy Montesinos ’21 named one of five 2019–2020 ProPublica Emerging Reporters

by Barbara Wiedemann

Carolina Covenant Scholar Patsy Montesinos, a junior at UNC Hussman, returned this week from a whirlwind three-day workshop in New York City as one of five young journalists selected from over 150 candidates to participate in the ProPublica Emerging Reporters program.

In its fifth year, the independent nonprofit newsroom’s program, which aims to lower barriers to investigative journalism for college journalists from diverse backgrounds, gave Montesinos three days to network and learn from reporters in their native habitat: newsrooms at The New York Times, Buzzfeed, WNYC and ProPublica.

The program also paired Montesinos with ProPublica’s Emmy Award and Edward R. Murrow award-winning filmmaker and journalist Katie Campbell, providing the Hussman junior with $9,000 in seed money to produce a video on immigration and family dynamics which she pitched last fall and plans to finish this summer under Campbell’s tutelage.

As an Emerging Reporter, Montesinos will also have the opportunity to attend the 2020 NICAR Conference devoted to data journalism this March in New Orleans.

Kate Sheppard, a teaching associate professor at Hussman and senior enterprise editor at HuffPost, first brought the Emerging Reporters program to Montesinos’ attention.

“When I saw this opportunity at ProPublica, Patsy was one of the first students who came to mind,” said Sheppard. “She had done tremendous work as part of our international projects course last spring, and has shown promise on long-form investigative and narrative work. I am excited to see what this program helps her produce!”

Montesinos remembered needing the confidence boost that Sheppard provided. “I looked at it and thought ‘it’s for writers, and I’m more broadcast/video. I don’t really fit what they are looking for,’” she said. “But Kate told me I should apply — and I became the first video journalist they accepted into the program.”

A North Carolina native whose family returned to a small village in Mexico at age 10 — where cell phone service was almost nonexistent — Montesinos returned north alone at age 15 to pursue her high school education. As Central Piedmont Community College’s first-ever commencement speaker, she shared some of her back story. As a young teen, she worked weekends in order to rent a room along the way to a high school degree; and then experienced homelessness and struggled with her parents’ divorce back in Mexico while holding down sometimes three or four part-time jobs to earn an associate’s degree in North Carolina.

Encouraged to pursue journalism by Central Piedmont’s Jennifer Conway, a Charlotte newspaper veteran, and to consider UNC-Chapel Hill by Carolina alumna Amanda Capobianchi, Ph.D., the community college’s associate dean for student life, Montesinos came to UNC as a Covenant Scholar in the fall of 2018. The Covenant, an aid program that covers her financial needs through grants, scholarships and work-study (not loans), has afforded her the opportunity for the first time ever to fully focus on academics, and the UNC Hussman broadcast and video student is thriving.

“Moments like this — the fact that I got this opportunity, having the chance to visit all these reporters in New York: these moments really help my confidence and inspire me,” said Montesinos. “They make me feel that I CAN make a career out of journalism.”

“Sunday night — I has just arrived in New York,” Montesinos added. “I got a text from Miss Owens [UNC Hussman Stembler Lecturer Lynn Owens] that I’d been elected to be an anchor for Carolina Week. Things like being named a ProPublica Emerging Reporter; like becoming a Carolina Week anchor. These things fight off the ‘imposters syndrome’ that maybe we all have sometimes, and make me feel like I am doing what I’m supposed to be doing.”