About Francisco Barradas

Francisco Barradas's avatar image

Francisco Barradas has worked as a journalist for more of two decades. He has lived in San Francisco since 2006, and contributes regularly to El Tecolote, El Mensajero and Radio Bilingüe. 

His articles and videos has been syndicated across Impremedia newspapers such as La Opinión (Los Angeles), El Diario (New York), La Raza (Chicago), La Prensa (Orlando). His photographs have landed on the covers of El Tecolote and El Mensajero, and been published in La Opinión, El Diario, SF Weekly, San Francisco Bay View and SFBay.

Barradas' work focuses on immigration, poverty, education, labor rights, crime, health and science. He is also passionate about movies and baseball; he has covered the San Francisco International Film Festival for the last five years, and chronicled the 2010 World Series through tweets, photos and articles for Impremedia.

In 2009 he was awarded the New America Media-Irvine Foundation California Politics and Policy fellowship for ethnic media journalist.  The same year he became a fellow of the Knight Digital Media Center after been selected to participate in a multimedia news production workshop at UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.  In 2010, he became a fellow of The Changing Face of America, an intensive institute for journalist covering immigration, organized by the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and the Warren Institute at UC Berkeley School of Law. In 2012, Columbia Journalism School accepted him to participate in the workshop Covering Youth Violence: Lessons from the front lines at University Center, Chicago.

In the US, his work has been recognized three times with the José Martí Award from the National Association of Hispanic Publications.

On the side, Barradas is a voracious reader of literature and history­, and pens calaveras (or "skulls"), satiric verses adopted as a journalistic genre in Mexico since the 19th century.

 

Stories

Digital media stories published elsewhere by Francisco Barradas:

  • Fiel al papel / Loyal to the paper [edit]
    As a way to keep him active and make an additional money, a Nicaraguan retiree, Pablo Antonio García, offer to his peers in San Francisco's Mission District print copies of newspapers he brought from Nicaragua two months before. Despite more and more people rely on computers or mobile phones to read the news, Mr. García's merchandise still have a bunch of consumers. All this make me think in the relevance of the print press in the US, even Today when generally is accepted that the newspaper industry is dead. Para ocupar sus horas de jubilado, Pablo Antonio García, un nicaragüense radicado en San Francisco, California, vende a sus conocidos ediciones pasadas de periódicos de su país.
  • Presente - Music and Photos [edit]
    Presente –a 9 minutes photo slide show– was part of the exhibition Imagining the Mission, which was the main event during a year long celebration of the 40 anniversary of El Tecolote newspaper (www.eltecolote.org) in 2010. At the end of that year, with a bunch of free time and searching ideas for a project, I found the entire folder of Presente. Watching again this photos, and truly inspired for the photo essays of Magnum photo agency, I start matching sound bites -from the free sound project web- with the images. This the result.
  • A 30,000 (and counting) views video... made with my bberry [edit]
    Here's one proof that content -or interest- surpass quality. It was known some people pass out watching Danny Boyle's movie 127 hours. Happens all around the US, according with media reports. The night I went to see the movie, at the Embarcadero theaters in San Francisco, not just one, but two! guys fainted. I made this video using my cellphone, then editing in i-movie and finally posted in youtube. After a day, the SF Weekly used it to support a blog post. In 3 moths, the video has been watching more than 10,000 times, with an increasing numbers of comments too.

Writing

Content on this site written by Francisco Barradas (includes contributory writing):

  • Projects

    • Charles Chocolates
    • Charles Chocolates is the story of one man’s dedication to the art of chocolate, his pursuit of perfection and a complete and total passion for producing only the finest confections. ...