Leilane Rodrigues made a significant name for herself in the world of journalism, winning numerous awards for her pieces centered around human rights violations before becoming a professor in an effort to produce a greater impact.
After a 17 year long career as a journalist in Brazil, Rodrigues was at the peak of her success. But she began to question who was benefitting from her work in the field, causing her to go back to school in an effort to expand her understanding of the ethics and advancements of the changing industry.
This semester, Rodrigues is the newest staff member of the Journalism, Media and Film department at Suffolk University, using her experience to educate the new generation of journalists
For Rodrigues, making the switch from being out in the field to the classroom was one she felt she had an obligation to make. She said that she saw herself getting all the recognition and celebrity from the pieces she was creating to a far bigger extent than the subjects of the pieces were experiencing good results. For this reason, she went back to school, getting her masters degree in journalism in Portugal and moving to the U.S. to get her PhD from Michigan State.
“Not a lot of people do a PhD in journalism, especially when you’re doing very well,” Rodrigues said. “But I felt like I needed to learn more to do better.”
She wanted to explore themes of ethics in journalism and how journalists should act in ways that prioritize their subjects. During her PhD program, Rodrigues was awarded the American Association of University Women International Fellowship which allowed her to access financial and mentoring resources while in her PhD program.
This award allowed Rodrigues to start a research project centered around images of racial violence on social media and the impact these images had on Brazilian activists. The article is under review, awaiting publication now.
Rodrigues decided she wanted a career in journalism at the age of 17, saying that she was greatly inspired by the charity work done by her grandmothers. Rodrigues’ natural curiosity led her to question the world around her, especially the inequalities she witnessed growing up in Brazil, a quality that also lended itself to her interest in human rights stories in particular. The stories she chooses to cover are a result of her background, she said.
There is a lot of pressure in the journalism field to remain neutral in the work that is done. For Rodrigues, however, her Brazilian background is what drew her to the field, making it so she is never truly neutral, a quality that she believes helps her in her reporting.
Rodrigues wrote a story about police killings in a neighborhood ignored by the government, characterized by poverty and socially created crime and violence, the favela of Jacarezhine.
The police in Rio de Janeiro invaded the favela in the largest state sponsored police killing in Brazil, an event that was largely publicized and reported on. Rodrigues’ story took a different approach to documenting the event than many of the others written at the time. She told the story of the killings and the favela from the perspective of the children who lived there.
“That was the hardest story I had to write in 20 years,” Rodrigues said.
Rodrigues described the widely held stigma about the children growing up in favelas that they will all one day turn into criminals when they are older.
“Kids sometimes lose the right to be kids in favelas,” Rodrigues said.
When interviewing the kids on such a sensitive topic, she did not outright ask them about their experience with violence. Instead she spoke with them about their everyday lives, to gain perspective on how their environment has impacted their ability to be children.
“What I was trying to do is show how this kind of urban conflict, how this brutality affects a person who’s growing up,” said Rodrigues.
In covering such violent and potentially traumatizing topics, there is its own toll the reporting takes on the journalist.
“I always had it clear that it’s not about me, the story’s not about me,” Rodrigues said.
Keeping the subjects of her story a priority while covering them has allowed Rodrigues to cope with a lot of violent and upsetting topics she reports on. This helped her put things in perspective and remain level headed while reporting.
Rodrigues also described her experience in therapy which she continued throughout the majority of her career as a journalist as well as developing the skill of learning how to rest as other effective coping strategies she has employed as a journalist.
For Rodrigues, her success in the world of journalism is profound, winning a total of 13 awards and, in 2018, she was identified as the fourth most highly awarded journalist in the Midwest of Brazil.
A lot of this success Rodrigues attributes to her ability to gain a new perspective or view on a topic, looking at her stories from a different angle than has previously been covered and gaining the trust of her subjects by treating them with respect.
In one story she wrote, Rodrigues covered the topic of modern day slavery in Brazil in 2020.
To prepare for this story, she read documents and data about individuals being rescued. One document she read contained a brief note at the bottom, referencing individuals who had been rescued more than once from slavery in Brazil. Noticing this small fact and exploring it more deeply is what set Rodrigues’ story apart from others and allowed her to explore a new side of the issue.
“It’s one of the stories I am proudest to have written,” Rodrigues said.
Still, Rodrigues found that she had plans beyond continuing as a full time reporter.
Rodrigues said, “Every time I won an award, obviously I was happy, but I was always thinking, ‘how can I give this back to the community, to all the people involved, to everyone I interviewed.’”
She said she felt as though the awards she won were misplaced and truly belonged to all the people whose stories she was telling through her reporting, thus marking her decision to transition to an educator role.
Even though Rodrigues is no longer actively reporting, she does not see her position teaching as all that disconnected. She described teaching as a way that she keeps learning as well.
“It’s a way for me to update what I know about journalism,” she said.
Rodrigues said that the students she has taught her more about the trajectory of modern journalism than her experience in the field.
“My 20 years of experience really informed my teaching but my teaching really informs my practice,” she said.
Many of Rodrigues’ stories had her traveling for two or three months, spending time in very remote places in Brazil, gaining the perspectives of those whose voices have so long been ignored or forgotten.
Even though she is no longer covering these stories herself, her identity and personality make it so she is always in search of doing more to benefit the world and the field of journalism as a whole. Suffolk is incredibly lucky to have such an amazing professor with such vast experience and a contemporary way of introducing students to the world of journalism.
Rodrigues said, “I really miss being outside every day just exploring and telling stories but I love sharing this in the classroom too because I love seeing a new journalist being born.”
