Elizabeth Campos

Student profile: Elizabeth Campos

In her time in the CSULB Journalism & Public Relations program, Elizabeth Campos truly made a mark. She was a contributor to the Daily 49er and 22 West Magazine, a host for 22 West Radio, a translator and reporter for VoiceWaves and president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. She graduated in May 2018 as one of the department’s top students and left soon after to participate in the New York Times Student Journalism Institute for two weeks over the summer. We spoke to her shortly before she finished her studies last spring.

 Did you always know you wanted to be a journalist? What inspired you to pursue your career in journalism?

Campos: No, it was never like, “When I grow up, I want to be a journalist” for me. I was born in the United States, and when I was 3, I moved to Mexico. After 15 years, I moved back to the States, and I had no idea what I wanted to do. I just had the idea of doing something with communication. For a while I was even thinking of doing architecture, even though I’m terrible with anything that has to do with numbers. 

But what really turned me on to journalism was the fact that my friends and family from Mexico would repost news articles on Facebook. Of course, when I moved to the States, I started meeting new people, and I would add them on Facebook, too. It got to the point where I would see news articles that both friends from the U.S. and Mexico would share, and I would always see a contrast in the stories and the different lifestyles that both countries had. I started noticing the differences from afar, like seeing my home country in a different lens, and I would start understanding a lot more things.

It helped me to understand things even better when I actually started writing those stories. I started talking to even more people and learning more about how things really were. It just felt like a huge weight off my shoulders when I would answer all the questions I had through writing, and it was then when I realized that journalism was what I wanted to do.

What is exciting to you about journalism, and what frustrates you the most?

Campos: What excites me the most, and I know it’s cliche, is telling other people’s stories and giving a voice to other people. It’s the fact that I’ve started answering a lot of questions that I had, and I’m pretty sure a lot of other people had, as well, especially contrasting both countries.

What frustrates me the most is when I’m doing the interviews and wondering if I’m going to get a phone call back. But that’s just the process of writing.

I guess what reallly frustrates me about the current state of journalism is that I feel like journalism isn’t given the credit it deserves. We are essential for democracy and freedom, but people who do not value journalism denounce it as just gossip or just blogging or little tutorial videos. I don’t feel like people really see the value of what a journalist does. People just see the product of the story, but no one really sees what goes on behind the scenes.

What was your most memorable moment in your time at CSULB?

Campos: It was the first video story I did with VoiceWaves. It was around the Day of the Dead, and I went to the Hollywood Forever cemetery. They do an event where they put up altars honoring the dead, and the point of the story was that some of these undocumented people in the cemetery died because they didn’t have healthcare. I was writing a story on a particular family who just lost their father for that reason. It was really hard because for one, it was my first video and I had just learned how to work the camera. But there was so much emotion that I would ask a question and they would start tearing up, and you have to learn to give them their space. I would want to ask more questions, but it’s hard because I knew they are hurting. That was probably one of the hardest lessons for me because it just sort of happened, and I had to think on the spot. I wanted to get my answers, but I also had to be human above all.

If you could give advice to yourself when you first stepped onto campus, what would you tell yourself?

Campos: I think I would tell myself to be more fearless and not care what other people think. I question myself a lot. Not that I don’t care about things now. It’s just that if I hadn’t been as scared of what other people thought, I probably would have done more. I probably would have gotten better stories if I wasn’t as shy or as much as an overthinker, especially when I first started with the Daily 49er.