Streets Dept Podcast – SN 3, EP 15: Fabiola Cineas and Whose Stories Are Told

Welcome back to the Streets Dept Podcast, y’all! The Streets Dept Podcast is one-on-one interview podcast where I, your host Conrad Benner, sit down with the creative minds shaping the world around us, from Philadelphia and beyond. Creative minds like street artists, poets, activists, politicians, small business owners, and community organizers.

Today, we’ll be chatting with Fabiola Cineas! Fabiola became a race reporter at Vox in June 2020 where she covers politics, policy, and culture. She was previously a Senior Editor and Business Editor at Philadelphia magazine, where she guided coverage of the city’s tech innovation scene, corporations and the local economy. Her work also explored the state of jobs and workplaces, leadership, and commercial development. Fabiola has also covered education in Philly and in her hometown of New York City with the Philadelphia Public School Notebook and Chalkbeat. Before launching her career in journalism, she taught seventh-graders English and Writing in Camden, New Jersey.

In our chat, Fabiola and I get into a number of topics from how public eduction is funded in the US and the plans for universities this fall considering COVID-19, to her move from local journalism to covering stories nationally. We actually ended up spending a bit of time on the sort of internal workings of being a journalist, which I found really interesting. Things like the various pressures and expectations on reporters that can ultimately affect the news you get. And of course we explore some of her current reporting at Vox, including how popular opinion is shifting with the momentum of the Black Lives Matter movement, finding justice for the murder of Breonna Taylor, and Joe Biden, voter suppression, and the coming presidential election this fall.

As I mention at the top of today’s podcast, a tweet thread published on June 11th in which Fabiola talks about her experience at Philadelphia Magazine ended up getting a lot of attention here in Philly. The result, it became one of the factors for the resignation of Philly Mag’s editor, Tom McGrath, after 10 years in the position. And while we do talk about it in our interview, Fabiola’s words in that thread are important and deserve to be read in full. If you have yet to read it, click here to do so while you start today’s episode.

Check out my conversation with Fabiola Cineas below, or on any major podcast streaming platform by searching “Streets Dept Podcast”!

 
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Season 3 of the Streets Dept Podcast is brought to you by our brilliant sponsors at the Spring Arts district, Elfant Wissahickon Realtors, and Kismet Cowork! Each episode is mixed and edited by our producer Mike Mehalick, and each Philadelphia episode of this season is recorded at Radio Kismet!

Listen to past episodes of Season 3 here:
SN 3, EP 1: Ernest Owens
SN 3, EP 2: Jane Golden
SN 3, EP 3: Christopher Plant
SN 3, EP 4: Jose Acevedo
SN 3, EP 5: Antoinette Cauley
SN 3, EP 6: Erika Rubio
SN 3, EP 7: Daphne Rice-Allen
SN 3, EP 8: DINKC
SN 3, EP 9: Sabrina Allie and David Sabados
SN 3, EP 10: Eriko Tsogo
SN 3, EP 11: Ginger Rudolph
SN 3, EP 12: Robert Perry
SN 3, EP 13: Tayyib Smith
SN 3, EP 14: Michael O’Bryan