Cindy Von Quednow
When Cindy Von Quednow reports a story, she gets into the thick of it.
After traveling to El Salvador with a college professor and a student photographer to report on the country’s presidential election in March, she was caught in a mob of supporters following a candidate to the polls. “We saw entire families going out to vote,” she said, adding that even dogs were dressed in campaign paraphernalia. “You don’t see this in the States; it was ridiculous.”
Reporting on Central America seems a natural fit for Von Quednow, whose mother is Nicaraguan and father is Guatemalan. A senior in journalism and Central American studies at California State University Northridge, the 23-year-old Los Angeles native has immersed herself in everything the school has to offer a budding journalist.
She has worked her way up from contributing to both of her school’s newspapers — the Daily Sundial and its bilingual counterpart, El Nuevo Sol — to being their features editor and managing editor, respectively. She is also minoring in Spanish-language journalism.
Her passion for work in the field is evident from the body language she displays when talking about her favorite stories or previous internships. Discussing her stint as a Scripps Howard Foundation intern in Washington, she said, “It’s just an interesting, awesome thing to be able to do,” and threw up her hands in enthusiasm.
Von Quednow had access to anything and anyone she wanted to report on with the support of her editor and the help of her press pass, a golden ticket to the D.C. hotspots. “I’m never taking this off,” she said, and mimicked clutching the pass in her hands.
Though not all of her experiences in journalism have been sunshine and daisies, Von Quednow said, she accepts the good and the bad.
After pulling together a special issue of El Nuevo Sol, about the struggles of the Latino community during the economic crisis, she almost had a crisis of her own. A long week of editing led to four nearly sleepless nights and phone calls from her parents to check if she was still alive.
“This is worth it,” she remembered saying to herself when she collapsed in her bed with the final product. “I know this is how it’s going to be for the rest of my life.”
A version of this article appeared in print on page 15 of the Tucson 2010 edition of The New York Times Student Journalism Institute.