Interview Assignment
Yosmerilyn Rodriguez
02/25/2019

Cynthia Robles is in her third year at Purchase college and is pursuing creative writing within the arts program there. Poetry was one of Cynthia’s first loves and she will continue to pursue her passion for it beyond her college career, but Cynthia hopes to build a solid professional career out of being a journalist. Journalism is her true love.

Y: What is your ideal work environment? What helps you grind and pump out work?
C: Noise is so distracting for me. It has to be completely quiet where I am. If isn’t completely quiet, I have to make it quiet (laughs). That means plugging in my headphones, or shutting my bedroom door, or outright asking for some quiet time be it from my parents or my roommate. Then I like to set the mood with some calming instrumentals, dripping some essential oils into my diffuser, and getting rid of any distractions on my work table. Oh, and of course reading some articles before I start. Other people’s work gets me going.

Y: Who is your role model?
C: To name someone a lot of people are familiar with: Anderson Cooper. He takes risks and puts himself where the real danger is so that he can relay the important information he gathers to the general public. And he’s just one of many.

Y: What do you like about journalism the most?
C: The honesty and truth that can be relayed to the public through it. Without journalists, we wouldn’t know what’s happening on the other side of the world—or even a few blocks away. It is because of journalism that we’ve been informed of the biggest, and smallest, events that have happened in the world.

Y: What do you dislike the most about it?
C: I dislike it when journalism gets away from relaying the truth and becomes biased and muddled. We should be able to rely on our journalist to give us the unmuddied truth about what’s going on!

Y: What inspired you to take up journalism?
C: It was reporter like Anderson Cooper, putting themselves on the frontlines and risking their own lives to show the rest of the world what’s going on in a place that we would otherwise not get access to. We would be so uniformed without it and would make so many wrong, unformed choices. Journalism gives us the opportunity to empathize with and be compassionate with the stories of those we would otherwise never know.

Y: Is it all serious and of live and death?
C: It isn’t. Although I like the fact that journalism is looked at as a serious profession, journalism is also about reporting on what’s happening in your own community. Your own borough. It’s about bringing to light the good and productive things that people are doing in order to advance themselves and those around them. Journalism is a celebration of accomplishments as much as it’s reporting on what’s wrong with the world.

Y: Do you think journalists are necessary now more than ever before, due to the current political climate of the nation?
C: Journalists are always necessary and that doesn’t change depending on what the political climate is. It is necessary now more than ever for journalist to dedicate themselves to digging for the whole truth and reporting on the facts. There are those in government right now that don’t appreciate the truth, or it being revealed to the public.

Y: So, you’re ready to graduate and get out into the world as a journalist?
C: Hell no! (laughs) I still have a lot to learn and I’d like to stay in this incubator that is school for as long as I can and watch what is, and what is not being done in the world of journalism—so that I’ll be ready to kick ass.

Y: It seems like right now your passion for journalism lies in new reporting. Maybe someday you’ll want to move away from that and pursue something else in journalism. What would that be?
C: Food! I want to let the world know what my taste buds find exciting. I want to give food journalism my own twist. I don’t think I’ll even wait until I get tired of new reporting to do it. That’s something I want to do today!

Y: Well, good luck to you and all of your future endeavors!
C: Thank you.