First and Longest Running Spanish-Language News Show at Community College Lauded as a Career Launcher
(Santa Ana, CA)— On Thursday, May 28, TV/video students at Santa Ana College’s TV studio, located at the Digital Media Center, 1300 S. Bristol, Santa Ana, will have something to applaud about. In addition to the fact that their college is turning 100 this year, the student-produced Spanish-language newscast Noticiero Latino del Condado de Orange (NLCO) will reach the 20-year mark with an anniversary production. Shortly after production is finished, the show will be viewable on the Around and About Orange County/Noticiero Latino del Condado de Orange Facebook and YouTube sites.
“In 1995, Santa Ana College pioneered the first national Spanish-language student news show. It enabled the college to directly communicate with the growing number of Spanish speakers in the community,” said Terry Bales, professor of TV/Video Communications & Film and department chair. “At that time, the college received publicity on Univision and Telemundo. Still going strong, the news show can be seen online via Facebook and YouTube. On May 28, we are also concluding the 30th anniversary year of Around and About Orange County, the oldest continuous-running newscast in OC that is also produced by Santa Ana College students.”
NLCO has helped launch many successful careers in broadcast journalism and video production. Among them is Vicente Serrano, award-winning documentary producer of A Forgotten Injustice, the first film about the massive unconstitutional deportation of Mexicans and Mexican Americans from the United States during the great depression. Since 2012, Serrano has also been a national correspondent with Mundo Fox. Since 2010, he has been executive producer and radio host of Sin Censura con Vicente Serrano is the only Spanish-language morning talk show in the Chicago area. From 2003-2009, he was a news anchor with NBC-Telemundo Chicago and previously he was a news anchor with Univision in Arizona.
Other NLCO alumni include KTLA Los Angeles news producer Laura Rodriguez, Estrella TV Noticias 62 Los Angeles news reporter/anchor Dulce Castellanos, talk show host and former CBS and Telemundo photojournalist Victor Cordero, ESPN and Univision sports anchor and the host of the weekly sports show República Deportiva on Univision Lindsay Casinelli, and ESPN Sports Center producer Joe Rodriguez, who covered soccer for the 2014 World Cup and the 2012 Olympics and previously was producer/director for Fox Deportes.
“I still remember the first day that I showed up to Professor Bales’ mass media class and how impressed I was with the volume of knowledge and information he shared with us,” said Joe Rodriguez, ESPN Sports Center producer. “Attending classes at SAC-TV definitely helped shape my career and most importantly my life. The things that I learned from Professor Bales are too vast to list, but the most important thing he taught me was not to wait for the opportunity to land on your lap, but to go out make it happen.”
Claudia Buccio is NLCO’s current producer. Buccio, who was recently named Santa Ana College’s valedictorian for the 2015 graduating class, has known that she wants to become a news anchor and reporter since age 15. At the time, she lived in Uruapan, Michoacán, Mexico, with her parents who had moved her from Chino, California, where she lived until age nine, back to their native Mexico. When she was working on a physics project during her junior year in high school, she decided she wanted to have Spider-Man explain the death of his girlfriend Gwen Stacy as a breaking news story. She told her aunt about what she had in mind and before she knew it, she was at the television studio where her aunt worked as a news anchor. She had her first opportunity to be in front of the camera and got hooked.
When she moved back to California to attend college, she knew her goal was to study broadcast journalism. Before long, she found herself at Santa Ana College enrolled in Bales’ mass media class. He told her about the college’s TV/video program. By her second semester at the college, she was enrolled in the Principles of Broadcast News course and involved in the production of NLCO. Although normally it takes about six weeks before students in the course actually get in front of the camera, by chance Buccio had accompanied a team on a shoot to see how it was done and the Spanish-language reporter did not show up. The cameraman said, “Why don’t you do it?” and she did. After that, she participated as the reporter for one or two stories a week, the majority of which were for NLCO.
This year, she became producer of the NLCO newscasts. She was recognized with the college’s Journalist of the Year award for her work at SAC-TV during fall 2014. Recently, she was awarded the Maria Elena Salinas Scholarship from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
“I love SAC-TV, and especially Noticiero Latino,” said Buccio. “Each week students alternate positions in producing the newscasts. You get to do camera, technical directing, reporting, and anchoring. You get to learn everything.”
Once she finishes her bachelor’s degree in broadcast journalism at either Chapman University or the University of Southern California, she has her sights set on working as a reporter for Univision or Telemundo/NBCUniversal.
Bales, who is retiring on June 6, has been a professor at Santa Ana College since 1971 and has taught over 40,000 students in courses dealing with all aspects of the print and electronic media. These include classes in Film and Television History, Broadcast News Production, Mass Media and Society, Intro to Electronic Media, Print Journalism, and Public Relations. Until 2002, Bales moonlighted as a sports correspondent for ESPN/Sportsticker where he covered over 4,000 major league baseball games and about 1,500 Lakers and Clippers games and about 1,500 Ducks and Kings hockey games.
For more information, contact (714) 241-5778 or visit www.sac.edu.
About Santa Ana College
Santa Ana College (SAC), which is turning 100 years old in 2015, serves about 18,000 students each semester at its main campus in Santa Ana. The college prepares students for transfer to four-year institutions, provides invaluable workforce training, and customized training for business and industry. In addition, another 11,000 students are served through the college’s School of Continuing Education located at Centennial Education Center. Ranked as one of the nation’s top two-year colleges awarding associate degrees to Latino and Asian students, the college is also recognized throughout the state for its comprehensive workforce training programs for nurses, firefighters, law enforcement and other medical personnel. SAC is one of two comprehensive colleges under the auspices of the Rancho Santiago Community College District. Visit www.sac.edu to learn more. For information about Santa Ana College’s Centennial, please visit www.sac.edu/100.
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