Local news in the greater San Antonio area is getting a boost, with the next generation of storytellers at Texas A&M University-San Antonio winning a competitive $50,000 grant to expand its student news publication and fund paid internships at area news outlets.
Ten other news publications in Texas received funding from the Press Forward initiative, including San Antonio-based Deceleration, a nonprofit online publication focused on ecological and cultural crises, and the Uvalde Leader-News.
Press Forward is a national organization focused on the future of quality local news.
Student journalists at The Mesquite have told hard news stories that escaped broader news coverage over the years, including campus protests amid a nationwide movement in the wake of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the details surrounding a student death that worried the campus community.
Now, Xochilt Garcia, a communications senior and the editor in chief of the publication, said there will be more reporters to shoulder that work as the university expands at a rapid pace.
“What it means for The Mesquite is being able to add more positions [to] cover more beats here on campus,” she said. “TAMUSA keeps developing and growing every semester, and it’s been kind of getting out of hand with just a staff of five or six people at a time.”
TAMUSA grew from 7,603 students last year to 8,036 students this year and has added new buildings for academics and student life to accommodate the growth.
In addition to campus stories that range from political panels to changes in leadership and other student matters, the publication is looking to fill a broader gap in community news coverage on the South Side of San Antonio.
Jenny Moore, the founding director of Jaguar Student Media and a communications professor, said that role is increasingly important as more students look to enter the journalism industry.
“They fill a really important role in that they’re covering areas of the Southern Bexar County and South San Antonio that have been historically underserved and underreported,” she said.
Stories about registering to vote and coverage of local races have exposed readers to information they need to know to make informed decisions.
The Mesquite’s faculty advisor, Teresa Talerico, and Moore wrote in the grant application that TAMUSA “is quickly emerging from literal scrub brush to correct the problem of educational attainment in South Texas,” adding that the community they serve struggles with housing, employment and health.
According to a copy of the grant application, students will first gain a foundation in reporting at the student publication and then have the option to advance “into a capstone Internship Program at a small-town newspaper,” including The Devine News, and The Boerne Star. The Mesquite also has a paid internship for student journalists to report on the city of Castroville for a new publication called Castroville Cypress.
“A lot of the small local town newspapers I know would love to have the people that are on the Mesquite team,” Moore said in an interview. “They just don’t always have the resources or the money.”