Jasmine Fernandez
By Ethan Wu
The old cliché that journalists ought to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted has always been an aspiration. An ever more distant one at that — especially as the internet has put the profession’s business model under strain.
Jasmine Fernández embodies that journalistic tradition. Her work as a part-time student at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism covered an organizing effort by a group of New York City delivery workers, galvanized into action by the murder of one carrier by a bike thief.
“That piece was organized around a demonstration but went far deeper than that model generally does, with detail and context and demonstrating Jasmine’s depth of reporting as well as her empathy,” said Mike Hoyt, who taught Fernández at Columbia.
“Plus beautiful photos. Her photography seems to be kind of a secret weapon,” he added.
The daughter of Colombian immigrants, Fernández, 23, knows well what it means to live in precarity. Growing up poor in Medellín, the erstwhile crime capital of the world, her family’s access to education was scarce. Her grandfather didn’t make it past the first grade, ditching school to peddle cigarettes and gum at the local plaza. Even he was somewhat lucky by the standards of the time — when only a third of school-age children attended any primary school at all.
“I’ve really valued education and where it can take you, and I’ve learned throughout the years how many people have backgrounds just like mine,” she said. “I would say I’m motivated by providing a voice to the voiceless.”
Yet for someone committed to amplifying the voiceless, Hoyt described Fernández as having a surprisingly reserved demeanor — preferring an unassuming determination to blazes of glory.
Indeed, her path to journalism began not from a pursuit of media limelight but from a fascination with the dissonance in the world around her. Moving from New York City, where she was born, to the University of Richmond for her undergraduate years, Fernández found herself within a fresh, unfamiliar political landscape.
“I was fascinated by how many people in Virginia — mainly outside of Richmond, but also within the business school — were adamant Trump supporters, hanging flags from their homes, posting stickers on their cars, and wearing t-shirts and caps to places like the supermarket and mall,” she said.
It was all so different from New York. But where some would avoid the discomfort, Fernández found herself drawn to it. “I became really interested in hearing both sides of the conversation, no matter how extreme, so I signed up for my first journalism class.”
That experience set her on the path to the Dow Jones News Fund Business Reporting Program. She took media classes, switched majors from business to journalism, and found an internship at Long Island’s Newsday, where she met alumni who encouraged her to attend Columbia’s journalism school.
At Columbia, the pandemic forced instructors to quickly overhaul their curriculum. Instead of covering certain neighborhoods or boroughs in New York, she was assigned to cover how small businesses were adapting to Covid-19. Though she had long ago been a business major, the prospect of business reporting had hardly occurred to her.
From there, Fernández’s successful application to DJNF landed her a position at American Banker, an influential trade publication. In covering an industry that too often uses complexity to mask its human impacts, Fernández’s drive, humility, and empathy will serve her well.