Francisco Vara-Orta
DEI Director at Investigative Reporters and Editors
Turning a passion for DEI into a career
Francisco Vara-Orta is the director of diversity, belonging, equity and inclusion at Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE), a nonprofit membership association for journalists.
His 20 years in the industry started on the “traditional” path in print, working at different newspapers before joining the Los Angeles Times.
Vara-Orta worked for IRE as a graduate assistant while getting his master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri. He then became a trainer helping newsrooms, universities, and colleges learn investigative-reporting tools.
Vara-Orta said his current role was created after the George Floyd protests in 2020. While he still teaches basic journalism skills like working with open records, he now also trains companies on how to make their newsrooms more inclusive.
By Tiffany Chang
IRE had been under scrutiny after years of this perception that investigative journalists were only “old white men.”
There were people of color in membership and on board in 2019. In my time on staff, though, we went from about 13% PoC members in 2019 to 40% PoC members as of today. I could see that people were trying to do better, and they made me feel like I belong.
When navigating any position in a white world, you have to act a certain way, you have to be able to speak a certain way, you have to be able to code switch. Over the years, I’ve had to do that to survive, so I felt maybe I was uniquely equipped to fill this position when it arrived.
I do still struggle with embracing this work to a degree, because I do not want to be viewed as someone with an anti-white agenda, and that is how the work can be perceived. But I also don’t want to shy away from who I am. I’m very proud of who I am, but I’m more than just my identity as a Mexican-American, out gay man. I am a seasoned journalist: I know how to do investigative reporting and I have data skills. I have paid my dues.
There’s still a degree of fragility surrounding this work, people feeling threatened, unsure, or uncertain. They need reaffirmation. They need to know there’s a seat for everyone at the table, and that the inclusion of others does not mean the exclusion of those who were there before. That’s a generational issue as much as a race issue.
True DEI Is About More Than Just “Faces”
Media organizations are slow to act. Upholding racism doesn’t just mean having ugly, prejudiced thoughts. If they don’t want to uphold racism, there should be a sense of responsibility toward the communities they live in and benefit from.
Does your content reflect the community in a way that is equitable? What does your staff look like? How do you make room for others and not get threatened? If you have that culture, it’s going to lend itself to having a more representative staff.
There are some ways we can measure change that’s happened. At IRE, we’re making our annual diversity and inclusion conference fully virtual at a reduced rate for accessibility and caregiving, because we know some people have kids, have family members to take care of, or canʻt travel.
They need to know there’s a seat for everyone at the table, and that the inclusion of others does not mean the exclusion of those who were there before. That’s a generational issue as much as a race issue.
There’s also the rise of organizations like Ida B. Wells and the Trans Journalists Association that complement traditional groups like Poynter, Neiman, and the Columbia Journalism Review to give guidance to newsrooms and journalists. And now, the majority of the powerful positions at the Center for Public Integrity are people of color. That’s a legacy organization — it’s not just about faces, it’s about putting people in positions where they can speak up and say, “Here’s how we’re changing our coverage.”
We are in a place of opportunity to do something proactive. You can’t litigate the past. We have all inherited a lot of things that seem unfair that we have to deal with. That is the way the world works and the way humanity is. But it is also a responsibility and a reality that we have to confront.
Covering People Who Matter Across Communities
The greatest tragedy is that the lack of diversity in media creates missed opportunities to find a common ground that can unite us more as a democracy and as a consumer base.
For some communities, Kenny Chesney comes and it’s a big thing, even if others don’t really get the phenomenon. But then Bad Bunny comes and people joke, “Who is that bunny?” He is a huge symbol, and I see a lot of white journalists treat him like a joke.
It reminds me of when Selena was killed. Selena was an English-speaking woman born in the U.S., but who could only sing in Spanish because record labels did not think the mainstream market would like her as a brown woman or that there was money in the Mexican-American and Spanish-speaking communities. So, they were shocked when they saw the economic response that then led to the Latin-music explosion of the ’90s and early 2000s.
They did not know what to do. It was like they were asking “Who is this woman?” We as a culture (media included) miss opportunities like that.
Today, folks think, “We’ve got to cover BTS,” “We’ve got to cover Bad Bunny.” But what do we do with that? Some people think just covering it at all is the only step. It is the first step, but it is not where it ends.
There are many conversations we should be having ahead of time. We can prepare.
Everyone prepared for the Queen’s death. There was all this really great journalism with texture and nuance because the Queen of England means a lot to white people in America, so they knew those stories were a priority and were ready.
Are they going to be like that if something happens to a similarly iconic figure to other communities in the U.S.? Or do we make the same mistake over and over?