“That really then gave me the opportunity to write a book that I hope is seen as very pro-South Bronx, and to try to demonstrate that the devastation in the ‘70s and early ‘80s was not caused by residents of the South Bronx, but by this confluence of forces that really caused the whole world to think of the South Bronx as a terrible, terrible place, and to show that the residents of the South Bronx and other community members were really instrumental in bringing the South Bronx back,” she said during a talk presented by the Fordham College at Rose Hill Honors Program at the Rose Hill campus on Monday, Feb. 24.

“It gave me a chance to dispel some of these negative terrible stereotypes about people in the South Bronx,” she added.

The book includes stories of resilience, such as Evelina Lopez Antonetty’s work in bringing summer meal programs to the Bronx for students when they were out of school. And it tells stories of activism, such as resident Kathryn Speller’s work in marching against hospital closings and organizing tenants rights groups.

McLaughlin’s book has become the centerpiece of a new course in Fordham College at Rose Hill’s Honors Program called Bronx Exploration: History, Economy, and Culture.

The class stems out of a new honors program curriculum, launched in fall 2019, that aims to educate a community of scholars for justice and among other things, teaches students about the history and culture of the community, said Eve Keller, Ph.D., professor of English and honors program director.

The effort extends to faculty as well, Keller noted. “This is part of an honors program project to become better citizens of the neighborhood in which we live and work,” she said.

The event was the second in a series of talks about the borough that the honors program has hosted. The first, “The State of the Health of the Bronx,” was held on Tuesday, Feb. 11, and featured Dr. Jane Bedell, the medical director of the Bronx Neighborhood Health Action Center, and Kim Freeman, manager of the Tremont Neighborhood Health Action Center.

Learning from the Community

Honors students in the audience asked McLaughlin about her work in the borough, the history of the South Bronx, and what it looks like today.

Many of them said they enjoyed how she told the history of the area through the eyes of local residents.

“I appreciated that you quoted really mostly community members, and people you knew personally and people who spoke about their own problems, experiences, ideas, and solutions. In our college courses, we really do more often read the work of academics and officials, but you tell the stories of real people’s experience,” said Amelia Medved, a first-year student..

McLaughlin said she wrote it that way to amplify the voices of those who might not be considered the “experts” or “officials.”

“It wouldn’t make sense for me to write an academic history book. What I wrote was really like a people’s history,” she said. “I featured people who I knew, I liked, I admired. I thought their stories should be told.”

She also helped people in attendance understand the wide variety of factors that impacted the South Bronx community during the 1970s and 1980s, including the flight of white and middle-class residents, a lack of a social service infrastructure, landlord issues, redlining, and Robert Moses-led construction projects like the Cross Bronx Expressway.

“The ‘70s were really a hard time in New York City—the city was facing bankruptcy,” she said. But the factors above, which were particularly prevalent in the South Bronx, led to the area being “the poorest congressional district for 30 years.”

When her agency, which eventually became known as BronxWorks, first started in the early ‘70s, she said they were a “two-to-four person storefront,” but everyone flocked to them because they were the only ones in town. Since then, she said their work expanded to address children and youth services, immigrants, homeless individuals, families, people with HIV/AIDS, working-age adults, and senior citizens.

McLaughlin said that the group’s work continues as they address new challenges, including ongoing development and potential gentrification, which she called a very “hard issue.”

“I think [Mayor Bill de Blasio] feels, as a lot of people do, that the city has to have more housing and that it’s the lack of housing that’s driving up prices,” she said. “People in the Bronx, some of the people really welcome some of the new buildings and want there to be a larger middle class in the Bronx.”

On the other hand, she said there’s this feeling that many of the projects are “luxury” buildings that will drive people out of their homes and neighborhoods.

“You build buildings and people with higher incomes come in and then stores start catering to them and commercial landlords start raising their rents on the stores, the mom and pop businesses go out of business as more high-end stores come in,” McLaughlin said. “Those high-end stores also may be less likely to hire community residents and then that also has a ripple effect to other apartment buildings.”

Still, despite its challenges, McLaughlin said she hopes that the book shows the strength of the Bronx and its people.

“The Bronx has always been home to a diverse group of immigrants,” she said, highlighting that all groups live together, instead of in separate sections, such as Chinatown or Little Italy. “It’s different in the Bronx than other places. In the Bronx, the immigrants are diffused throughout the populations—it’s much more mixed. I think that’s really been a strength of the Bronx.”

The Fordham College at Rose Hill junior works as a reporter and news manager at WFUV, where she anchors four newscasts every Wednesday, co-hosts a politics podcast, and covers the United Nations beat. On Nov. 1, she’ll be honored with WFUV’s Award for Excellence in News Journalism at the station’s annual On the Record fundraiser.

Managing her schedule has been a bit of a juggling act.

“There were days last year where I would go to class, come into work, go to class, and then come back to work,” said Candela, who started training at the station during her freshman year. “It’s a lot of balancing, but it’s my favorite place to be on campus. It’s my second home.”

A typical day at the station can go one of three ways for Candela: On Wednesdays, she builds and anchors her newscasts, which air during late afternoon and evening drive time. But on other days, she might be working on a “day-of” story, which she’ll pitch and then report on in the field. Or she might be working on her podcast, or a longer “deep-dive” story that she develops over time.

Telling Stories for a Public Radio Audience

When she builds her newscasts, Candela combs the daily news wire for stories that will interest WFUV’s audience.

“We like to lead with a local story if there’s something relevant enough, as we’re a local station,” she said. She also needs to be mindful of the types of news she includes. “We’re public, we’re not commercial,” she said, “so we don’t cover the ‘if it bleeds, it leads’ stories. We don’t really cover crime. We don’t cover fires. We’ll cover politics, city news, human interest stories.”

On a recent day at the station, located in Keating Hall on the Rose Hill campus, Candela produced a short story on the eve of the New York City mayoral primaries. She wanted to include some commentary on Mayor Bill de Blasio’s chances, but she didn’t want it to be her own.

“As public radio journalists, we don’t do opinion,” she said. “Our job is to just give the listeners as balanced and unbiased a viewpoint on a story as we can.”

So she used a sound bite from an interview she’d done for her Prickly Politics podcast the day before. The podcast, which Candela started last summer with co-host and fellow FUV reporter Jake Shore, focuses on the mayoral race and examines New York City issues that are important to voters, like transportation, Rikers Island, and campaign finance. For this mayoral primary episode, she’d talked to Jeff Coltin, FCRH ’15, a reporter for City & State magazine and an FUV alumnus, about the mayor’s chances and the lack of available polls. So she grabbed the clip of that conversation, and her story, and headed into the recording booth to put it all together.

Standing there with her notated script, Candela mentioned how important it is to “mark your copy.” It’s a trade trick she learned from WFUV News and Public Affairs Director George Bodarky, FCRH ’93, and Assistant News and Public Affairs Director Robin Shannon.

“Robin told me how to do breath marks after periods and certain commas, and George told me how to underline key words.” She read the script into the mic with the vocal cadences of a seasoned reporter, plugged in the sound clip from Coltin, and saved the piece to be included in her colleague’s evening newscast.

Training and Mentorship

Candela said Shannon and Bodarky “have become advisers in every way. … They teach you the trade and they see you grow and they encourage your progress.”

Bodarky, who runs the news training programs, said Candela has an “overwhelming sense of confidence, which is pretty remarkable. She is someone who is not afraid to express her opinion or put forth ideas,” he said, adding that she also has all the qualities of a great journalist. “She’s curious, skeptical, she looks and listens for the truth, and she cares about the medium and wants to use it effectively.”

All WFUV student news reporters take Bodarky’s training workshop and complete an internship at the station before being moved to a paid reporter position. Students get vocal training, learn how to conduct interviews, study journalism ethics, and learn how to work audio recording and editing equipment. The training program—and the on-the-job experience that comes later—are often touted by alumni as the best journalism education around.

“Everybody knows the reputation that FUV has,” Candela said. “They know if they hire an FUV reporter straight out of college, they will come in knowing exactly what to do.”

Award-Winning U.N. Reporting

After recording her mayoral primary story, Candela searched for news about the U.N. Security Council meeting on sanctions on North Korea, scheduled to happen that day. Candela has a strong interest in the U.N. and has reported on it extensively for WFUV; her series on the U.N. election won a first-place New York State Associated Press award this year.

If the timing worked out, she would report on the North Korea meeting for WFUV; she was also writing about it for her other job as a freelance assistant editor for PassBlue, an independent website producing news about the U.N.

Candela learned about PassBlue when reporting a U.N. story for WFUV. She asked if they had any summer internships, and instead they asked her to pitch a story. Now she’s a paid freelancer with significant responsibilities. “I’ve been introduced to ambassadors and treated like a professional,” she said.

Connections for the Future

An international political economy major and a student in the Fordham honors program, Candela plans to stay at Fordham for a master’s in ethics and society. After that: law school.

“The things I’m reporting on right now are what I want to work on policy-wise later, like human rights and global issues and sustainable development goals. I think the connections I’m making now and the expertise I’m developing on these issues will definitely help later on.”