Media Moves

Yvette Cabrera has moved to Washington, D.C., where she has started a new job as an investigative reporter for news site ThinkProgress.org, a project of the public policy research and advocacy organization Center for American Progress (CAP).

She is covering criminal justice, immigration and environmental issues, as well as the Trump administration.

“I’m excited to be part of an organization that values in-depth investigative journalism and is expanding these efforts at a time when this type of reporting is needed more than ever,” Cabrera tells Media Moves.

Prior to joining ThinkProgress, she had been contributing to investigative news site Voice of OC in Santa Ana since 2014. She will continue to collaborate with Voice of OC on several Orange County-based projects that she had been working on and that will be published in partnership with ThinkProgress.

She was previously an investigative reporter for the short-lived journalism startup Mission and State. Before that, she spent 13 years as a staff writer and news columnist for the Orange County Register.

Yvette Cabrera has landed a new job.  She’ll be an investigative reporter for the startup journalism project called Mission and State, formerly known as the Santa Barbara Investigative Journalism Initiative.  She starts in early March.

“My journalism career has taken me from West to East and around the globe, but I had always hoped to one day return to my hometown to practice the craft that I love most. The Mission and State journalism initiative allows me to fulfill that dream and also gives me the ability to practice journalism at its highest form, through investigative reports with a focus on narrative writing,” Yvette tells me.

“I grew up in working class neighborhoods throughout Santa Barbara, and as the daughter of Mexican immigrants college might not have been in my future were it not for the scholarships I received from organizations such as the Santa Barbara Foundation. So I’m excited to come full circle and to be able to return to Santa Barbara to dedicate myself to covering a community that I care about deeply.”

Yvette will be moving to the Santa Barbara area, but she says she’ll be returning to Orange County periodically to continue reporting on a few projects she’s currently working on. “I just won a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism in Washington DC to report on an Orange County-based investigation with statewide ramifications,” she says.  That grant was announced on Feb. 15.

Yvette is an award-winning investigative journalist who worked as a staff writer and news columnist for the Orange County Register from 1999 to 2012, specializing in social issues and Latino affairs. She has most recently been working as an investigative producer for KCBS in Los Angeles.

The Mission and State project, led by Executive Editor Joe Donnelly was created late last year through a Knight Foundation grant, will operate under the umbrella of the not-for-profit Miller-McCune Center for Research, Media and Public Policy.

NAHJ inducted CCNMA into its Hall of Fame last Friday, August 3rd.  President Yvette Cabrera accepted NAHJ’s award on behalf of CCNMA during the awards gala held at the UNITY convention in Las Vegas.

This is the first time since NAHJ created the Hall of Fame in 2000, that an award has been given to an organization and not to a person.

Founded in 1972, and celebrating its 40th year in existence, CCNMA is the organization that led to the birth of NAHJ in 1982.  NAHJ was later incorporated in 1984.

Yvette Cabrera gives acceptance speech during CCNMA’s induction into NAHJ’s Hall of Fame.

During her speech, Yvette announced that CCNMA, which had been headquartered at USC for many years and had recently been told it could no longer house the journalism organization, has found a new home.

CCNMA will relocate to Arizona State University’s newly opened California offices in Santa Monica in affiliation with the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Producer Saúl González and correspondent Yvette Cabrera won in the TV category.

CCNMA: Latino Journalists of California has released the names of the winners of the 13th Rubén Salazar Journalism Awards.

Correspondent Yvette Cabrera and producer Saúl González of KCET- TV are won in the TV category for their story “The Border Between Them,” which tells the story of an immigrant family and how ties between parents and children have been tested by deportation and separation.  You can see the winning entry here.

Los Angeles Times staff writer Richard Fausset won in the print category for his series on “The New Latino South,” which explored the complexities of immigration in a region that has grown increasingly hostile to Latinos.
There were no winners in the Radio, Photography or Commentary categories.

Mandalit del Barco

The awards will be presented during CCNMA’s 32nd Scholarship Banquet on June 1, 2012, at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles.

The honorees that night will be Mandalit del Barco of NPR, Steve Padilla of the Los Angeles Times and Jesús Sánchez of TheEastsiderLA.com.

Yvette Cabrera, columnist for the Orange County Register and the current president of CCNMA, has been laid off from the paper.

According to Gustavo Arellano, from the OC Weekly, 5 reporters, including Yvette, were laid off and 4 other unfilled positions were eliminated.

Yvette was named best columnist by the Orange County Press Club in 2011.  She had been at the OC Register for 13 years.