With support from the People’s Media Fund and PhillyCAM, Free Press’ Vanessa Maria Graber is building a coalition of Spanish-speaking communicators throughout Philadelphia.

“We’re trying to make things language accessible and advocate for Spanish-speaking communicators and journalists to have access to professional development spaces,” said Vanessa Maria Graber about her new project, Comunicadores.

Graber is no stranger to community-centered media. Currently, she serves as the Director of Journalism and Media Education at Free Press, as well as a producer and reporter for The Philadelphia Hall Monitor, but her roots lie in building and organizing community.

“A big part of the work I do is organizing journalists. I started [at PhillyCAM] organizing community media folk,” said Graber.

While working as the Station Manager for WPPM, a radio program she both developed and brought to fruition, Graber formed PhillyCAM Latinx, made up of Spanish-speaking TV and radio producers, as well as students taking classes at PhillyCAM.

“Right before the shutdown in 2020, one of the last events we had here was a PhillyCAM Latinx event,” said Graber. “And then, unfortunately, because the center was closed for a while, the group never really reconvened.”

In Spring 2025, as tensions heightened surrounding an increase in ICE operations across the country, Graber felt the need to revive the project under a new banner. Thus began a series of conversations with Laura Deutch, PhillyCAM’s Education Director, and Arianne Bracho, the Director of Centro Integral de la Mujer Madre Tierra, a Philadelphia-based feminist Latinx multimedia production company.

“PhillyCAM is a place for professional development in a lot of ways,” said Graber. “So, we want to ask that question to our community of communicators: what do you need to do your job?”

Over the last year, with support from Deutch and Bracho, along with the People’s Media Fund, Graber formed Comunicadores. The pilot project aims to build a network of Spanish-speaking communicators who can share information and resources with each other and their communities.

“It’s not just journalists, it’s not just TV reporters, it’s not just content creators. It’s anybody you want to be in your group chat if an emergency happens,” said Graber. “To reach the general population, we need to meet them where they’re at, which means talking in a way that is understandable, using language and vocabulary that is understandable on the medium that they use.”

Graber explained that due to barriers in the industry and a general lack of representation in the media, Latinx journalists have relied on community-based information networks for years. Comunicadores is an extension of that work, which often goes unrecognized in the traditional media landscape.

“In many areas where the Hispanic population is rather new, in a state like Pennsylvania, for example, where all of the new people are attributed to immigrants, we didn’t have a history of a Latino press,” said Graber, “But there’s always been people giving the news, always been people sharing information.”

Finding the people who provide that news for their friends, family and neighbors requires some work. For Graber, this is where community engagement enters the picture.

“People congregate in person at community events, at churches, at schools, at grocery stores. So, we have to show up in those spaces in the community in order to build trust,” said Graber, “It’s really hard to report on people and communities when you don’t have those relationships built.”

Ensuring news is available in the language of the people who need it most is essential in keeping communities informed and safe, especially in unprecedented times, but it has implications beyond making journalism more inclusive.

“Once we build the relationships and meet the needs, then we can actually organize and activate as a group and build power,” said Graber. “That’s the ultimate goal.”

Comunicadores held its first event on Saturday, Feb. 14 from 1-4 p.m. at PhillyCAM, located at 699 Ranstead St.

"Now more than ever, it is important to center Spanish-speaking voices. To do so, we need strong ties among Spanish-speaking journalists,” said Letrell Deshan Crittenden, CCEM’s director.