Santa Fe journalist selected to talk at Dixon Awards
Copyright © 2022 Albuquerque Magazine
You indignantly to be a little loopy to be a journalist.
Melissa Segura, investigative reporter for BuzzFeed, surely thinks so.
Segura is the keynote speaker for the impending 2022 Dixon Awards, offered each and every 12 months to advocates of political science transparency via the New Mexico Basis for Break ground Internal affairs.
Following earlier keynote audio system that ????? ? ????? ??????? Marty Baron and Bob Woodward – either one of whom had been performed via award-winning actors in film variations in their tales – is slightly daunting for Segura. However her journalism profession is already stuffed with achievements to again her up.
Within the seven years she’s been at BuzzFeed, she has been investigating former Chicago police detective Reynaldo Guevara – who used to be accused of framing dozens of people that had been despatched to jail – which has ended in the exoneration and free up of greater than 30 other folks. Lots of them spent a long time in jail for crimes they didn’t dedicate, with one in every of them serving 32 years in the back of bars sooner than being launched previous this 12 months.
“This neighborhood that I wrote about used to be in reality terrorized via someone who grew up with them, he used to be from this neighborhood,” Segura stated.
As a Santa Fe local, Segura stated she feels her deep connection to New Mexico and its other folks makes her a just right candidate to discuss political science transparency within the state.
“I used to be born and raised right here. I’m a type of longtime, deeply-rooted New Mexicans, and I tab this land, I tab our other folks, I tab the neighborhood,” Segura stated.
Segura says that her process, which is composed of reporting on magnificence, race and social problems, intersects always with political science transparency.
“I’ve at all times truly cherished paperwork,” Segura stated. “I’ve at all times cherished seeking to perceive the whole lot of the tale.”
The point of interest of her profession has change into ensuring that individuals at the margins are heard via raising voices that aren’t typically heard.
The problems she regularly reviews on typically occur in communities which can be deficient, most commonly populated via non-English audio system and have got very low training charges, she says.
Segura stated she has encountered a lot of obstruction whilst reporting on those problems, acknowledging the “blue wall of silence” as an actual drawback.
“It’s as much as us that political science information are the place to begin and now not the he finished up in prison level,” Segura stated. “The place to begin being that we have got to talk politics to other folks, verify statements and reconcile timelines, that’s the actual paintings.”
Gatekeepers regularly love to make peace other folks imagine the method is difficult when it’s in reality now not, Segura stated.
“A large number of the households with whom I paintings can and do something really feel very a lot intimidated via the method and don’t even know the place to start a fight,” Segura stated. “That’s the place organizations like NMFOG are important to our democracy and being a useful resource to communities who can really feel ostracized from the machine.”
