Former Sun-Times Columnist Ventures Syndicated Column
Extra Bilingual Newspaper
05-09-2008
by Jessica Del Curto When Esther J. Cepeda put down her pad and pencil at the Chicago Sun-Times a couple of months ago, she knew it would not be the last column she would ever write.
Cepeda was a popular columnist at the Sun-Times, but was laid off in January during a recent round of cuts in the print media industry.
On April 29, the former Sun-Times columnist started her own Web site, www.600words.com, along with its sister site, pregunta-del-dia.com. Every Tuesday and Thursday, Cepeda will post a new "600 Words" column, where much like her Sun-Times column, she will write about various issues from the perspective of an opinionated Latina. Then Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, she will write on shorter topics and answer readers questions in "Pregunta Del Dia." "I knew I wanted to keep writing," she said. "The [Chicago] Tribune told me, ‘We have already got a Latina,’ because you know, just one is enough."
So she turned to various syndicates across the country, like the New York Times Syndicate and the Washington Post Syndicate, where she was told over and over, "We love you, but the economy is so bad right now, we can’t even sell our own columnists – we have newspapers canceling left and right, because everyone is tightening their belt."
It was then Cepeda decided to do it the modern way, by purchasing a domain name and opening up shop for herself.
While she doesn’t know the official number of hits her site received that first week, Cepeda said hundreds of e-mails came flooding in from people supporting her return.
"I had an outpouring of people who said, ‘Oh my God, we missed you.’ All kinds of readers, white readers, tons of really nice men and women readers," she said.
In Cepeda’s columns she poses interesting questions that others in the media or in the spotlight aren’t always asking. In an upcoming article, she plans to tackle the violence in the city.
She plans to ask various experts about their perspective on gang violence. For instance, she’ll ask an economist ‘With your background, what would you do," and see what kind of answers he or she comes up with.
"Because obviously, the Chicago Police Department doesn’t know what to do," she said.
For a full-time gig, Cepeda was hired as a director for United Neighborhood Organization, a non-profit that focuses on empowering the Latino community. But since she was a child, writing has been her passion.
"My parents moved here from México, and they always had the Sunwith them, they were using it to learn English, so the newspaper was always at my house," she said. "My whole life I wanted to grow up and be a newspaper columnist." -Times
She went to Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism. She studied Integrated Marketing Communication at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, then went on to be a teacher.
"Finally, I went, ‘Ok, I am 30 years old, if I don’t live my dream now, I am not going to do it,’" she said.
By day she was teaching, by night she was freelancing for the Daily Herald.
"I was filing five, sometimes six or seven news stories a week," she said. "I had these great clips, and after about seven months of that, I mailed them off to Don Hayner, [the managing editor of the Sun] and said, ‘Dude, give me a chance.’" -Times
And up until January, Cepeda was making friends and enemies writing about everything from the immigration marches to nuclear weapons in Iran for the Sun. -Times
"You know what’s beautiful? I get criticism from all sides," she said. "When I feel most successful is when the pro-illegal immigration and the anti-illegal immigration people both e-mail me about the same topic and say ‘You are so blah blah blah.’ You could hate what I am saying, but just be kind of happy that I am there."
The whole reason Cepeda continues to write is to keep the Latino voice in the media.
"There are no mainstream Latino opinion leaders," she said. "Who is out there talking about stuff? When Hillary and Barack were fighting over the Latino vote, you saw it on ‘Meet The Press,’ but there was no Latino person talking about these issues, it was all white people – and that’s good – but there has to be some kind of representation."
To read Cepeda’s columns, go to www.600words.com
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