Diego Mendoza-Moyers, Reporter: El Paso Matters
An El Paso native who covers energy and the environment
This week we talk to a reporter at a local non-profit, Diego Mendoza-Moyers, who covers energy and the environment for El Paso Matters. In our podcast episode, Diego discussed his approach to storytelling, how he sources his stories, and provided examples of stories he covers on his beat. He explained what makes El Paso such an interesting city to cover and shared how he's still learning as a journalist.
Excerpts from our conversation are below. They have been edited for clarity and length.
What is El Paso Matters and how does it differ from the El Paso Times?
Yeah, so we're a non-profit news outlet, Our CEO, Bob Moore, he was a former editor at the El Paso Times. And when he had to do a round of layoffs, at one point he said, I'm going to lay myself off, I don't want to do this anymore.
And so, in 2020 he launched El Paso Matters, a few years after leaving the Times. And I think that the whole goal is just to improve the quality of journalism. I think we've really seen the media environment deteriorate here. We have a bigger newsroom than the El Paso Times, which is the long-time paper here.
And so, we're still building up awareness. But our goal is to write about things that no other outlet is covering in El Paso and ideally, provide good depth, more depth than say a TV news reporter that has to turn in their 90- second package that day.
I think our benefit is being digital. We don't have to fill a paper every day. We don't have to do a newscast every day. So we can get a little bit more in-depth and provide a little bit better quality of news.
What makes El Paso such an interesting city to cover?
You realize the unique nature of the city once you leave. When you grow up here, you're like, man, let me get out of here. Then you leave and you go, man, the culture and this sort of bi-national nature of the city is so unique.
There's a real strong literary and artistic scene here. And a lot of writers, a lot of musicians come out of El Paso. And then, there's a beautiful mountain range that bisects the city and you realize wow, having a mountain range right outside your window is a rare thing in a lot of parts of the country.
So, there's just the beauty of it, the humble nature of the people here. It's not a place where there's a real strong sense of like competition and people trying to get ahead in their career. It's more people trying to raise families and just a different set of priorities. I would say here that's really cool. And like I said, just the Mexican-American culture is so strong here and it's the Mexican food capital of the world, just kind of a cool place to be. And yeah, once I left, I realized that it's a pretty cool, pretty unique, special place with a strong culture.
And obviously we're not the biggest city and there are plenty of flaws and lack of development in some ways, but I just wanted to come home and try to participate in the betterment of my community.
 How much of an education do you have to get for yourself when you write about something like rare earth deposits? Deposits that are located just outside of the city, which you wrote about in May?
I'm not an expert in rare earth elements and all these technological materials. I just got tipped off by an environmental organization who's saying, hey, there's these plans to mine this mountain. And it's really a pretty nondescript mountain outside in the desert, the vast desert expanse outside El Paso. It's got this major deposit of rare earth elements that enable basically all of our advanced technologies. And there's also lithium, which is a big component of batteries and a lot of various metals in this mountain.
I got this tip from this environmental organization that was really worried about the downside of mining this mountain away. And so then, all right, you just start looking into it and you start reading about well, what is the situation of rare earths in El Paso or in the U.S.?
You see, okay, well, much of these materials are imported from China, which controls a big percentage of the world's production of these materials. And I think we only have one active mine in the U.S. It just stems from just, all right, let me just start at a high level and just read every article I can about rare earths.
One of the two companies that's doing the project at this mine outside El Paso, they're publicly traded, they're a tiny firm. They're a penny stock, but they're publicly traded. And so, there's your in, because publicly traded firms have to file documents with the SEC and give some level of insight into their operations. It was a big learning process for sure, but I think it's after some years of covering financials at different companies, it was helpful to know to go look at the financial documents.
I'll try to talk to environmentalists and read everything I can about rare earths. Just try to, learn as much as I can, recognizing, and being humble to know that I'm never going to be an expert, but I can try to learn what I can.
(I) bang on the doors of some university professors and say what can you guys teach me? And ideally, more than one. So, you get a range of opinions.
 One thing that I think that you do particularly well is explaining and teaching within an article. Are there any tricks to doing it well?
I'll leave it to others to determine if I actually do it well or not, but I guess my approach to covering environmental topics or topics that are a little bit complex is just trying to speak in as plain English as possible or write in as plain words as possible.
One thing I like to do is, after work, I'll explain the story I'm writing to my wife or to my mom who are smart individuals, but they're not necessarily plugged in on every detail that I'm exploring. If I can explain it in such a way where they understand what I'm writing about, then I know I'm on the right track. And if I start explaining a story and they were totally lost and their eyes glaze over, I go, all right, I need to reframe this.
It's not always the easiest thing to do, but like I said, bouncing phrases and ideas off other people to see if they understand it is always helpful.
How has journalism, being a journalist, impacted you as a person and how you view the world?
I think the biggest thing that I've learned is be less confident in your beliefs. Interrogate your own values and your own beliefs and, and just be less confident. Because you learn so much about so many different topics and you just realize the more you learn, the less you know.
You think you know how a water system works in your town, or you think you know about electricity systems. And then you realize there's a whole lot of complexity and a lot of things that I'm not aware of and you're ignorant about.
And so, I think just generally recognizing our own limitations and, and trying to have humility paired with curiosity. I think those are really important things to just say, hey, man, let me, let me be less confident in my beliefs and try to learn and be intellectually open and curious.
That's the most important thing journalism's taught me.
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