Flo Tomasi / Arizona Sonoran News

At the Women’s Plaza of Honor of the University of Arizona, nine women are standing together for the first official photo of their media outlet team. They gathered around its two founders. 

Caitlin Schmidt and Susan Barnett are seasoned journalists who saw an opportunity to build something new after their own disillusionment with the declining state of local media.

They brought together a team of students and emerging journalists from the UA, creating Tucson Spotlight, a bilingual, nonprofit newsroom deeply rooted in the community it serves.  

And it’s not a platitude. Schmidt doesn’t just report on Tucson — she lives it. She runs a book club where local voices are uplifted, attends neighborhood events and can tell you the child’s name of the librarian organizing a donation drive or the activist fighting for clean water in your area. 

Schmidt considers journalism as a mission and ethics appear to be an almost religious commitment to her. 

Her co-founder, Barnett, 22, is equally embedded in the community. When she’s not covering South Tucson’s neighborhoods or border topics, she’s teaching roller-skating classes and organizing meetups for skaters. 

Barnett practices el chisme, the very Mexican version of the gossip, only if it uncovers injustice among her gente. 

“We know the people we write about,” she said. 

 New beginnings 

The genesis of Tucson Spotlight starts in the chaos of April 2023, when the Arizona Daily Star laid off a significant portion of its staff. Schmidt, a reporter there for over a decade, saw the writing on the wall.

“I didn’t want to sit around waiting for the next round of layoffs,” she said. 

To her, it became clear the resources just weren’t there anymore to do the kind of journalism that she considered connecting with the community. 

“As staff shrunk more and more, it was hard to be part of the community when one was just scrambling to get the number of headlines that you need to get a paper out every day,” she said. 

She left to co-found the Tucson Agenda, a hyperlocal news outlet promising community-focused coverage. 

“Later on, we brought Susan on to cover the Hispanic community and border issues,” Schmidt said. 

But when one of its other co-founders decided to move and report for and manage Tucson Agenda remotely from Pennsylvania, Schmidt couldn’t reconcile that with the promises made to readers. 

“We had spent the whole year out at events talking to subscribers about the value of locally owned and produced news. How do you do that from 2,000 miles away? I just felt like it would be hypocritical,” she explained. 

Unable to buy out the two other co-founders, Schmidt decided to start fresh. 

“And Susan was awesome enough to follow,” she said.  

Partnering with Barnett, who graduated from the UA School of Journalism and is now a grad student in its bilingual journalism program, had been laid off from the Arizona Daily Star’s Spanish-language sister publication La Estrella de Tucson. Schmidt in September launched Tucson Spotlight as a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to community-driven journalism. 

“The pay was really good at the Tucson Agenda, but my departure was more about my values and what I wanted to be as a journalist: someone that is truly boots on the ground, building solid trust and real relationships with community members,” Barnett said. 

A mission to amplify voices

Tucson Spotlight was built with a clear purpose right before the presidential elections: to provide Southern Arizona with local news that informs and amplifies the voices of underrepresented communities. And its Spanish-language counterpart, El Foco, is a vital part of that mission.

In Tucson, where nearly 43% of the population identifies as Hispanic, Spanish-language news is both a necessity and a rarity. According to Pew Research, 80% of Hispanic adults consume news in Spanish, yet only 25% feel there is enough available. When La Estrella de Tucson closed in 2023, it left a gaping hole in the city’s media landscape.

“We had a Latina-women-led team doing important bilingual work,” helmed by editor Liliana Lopez, Barnett said. “And almost overnight, it was gone.” 

Tucson Spotlight arrives on point to fill that void — not just with translations, but with original reporting tailored to Spanish-speaking communities. 

UA student and Spotlight reporter Isabela Gamez, who joined the team after an internship with Voice of America in Washington, D.C., said working on El Foco has been very rewarding. 

“There’s not enough Spanish-language news here,” Gamez said. “When we publish a story in Spanish, we know it’s reaching people who wouldn’t get that information otherwise. The only news that Latinos can really depend on is the Spanish broadcast that comes up at 5, and oftentimes they’re national broadcast, not local.”  

According to a Pew Research Center study, most Latino adults (65%) prefer to get their news from digital sources using smartphones, computers, or tablets, with a prevalence for social media. 

For Barnett, who covers South Tucson,“it also goes back to who’s reporting on the news, where they come from, who they are. It’s about representation too.” 

The co-founder remembers when she covered Proposition 314 and one of the volunteers shared how nobody knew about them because “there is not enough coverage of those issues.” 

Empowering emerging journalists 

Unlike many news outlets, Tucson Spotlight actively invests in emerging journalists like Gamez. Its staff includes several recent graduates from the UA, alongside more experienced reporters like Schmidt and Barnett. Everyone gets paid — even interns.

“I remember applying to every internship I could during my senior year and not finding a single one,” Barnett said. “It was important for us to treat our interns as equal reporters, because that is what they are! We value their work by publishing all the stories.” 

Schmidt had her own issues with the traditional model of unpaid internships.

“As a student, I (had) internships that actually cost me money,” Schmidt said. “We’re not doing that.”

That is how reporter and social media manager Angelina Maynes, a graduating senior, joined the team. She represents this next generation of journalists addicted to the reels format of vertical videos.

 “Gen Z isn’t reading newspapers — they’re on Instagram, TikTok,” Maynes said. “If we don’t meet them there, we lose them.” 

Maynes has helped Tucson Spotlight grow its social media presence through bilingual Instagram reels, which often attract tens of thousands of views. 

“We are a young team. It seemed normal to lean into creating news for the younger generation. It’s a harder sell if I’m trying to create it when we have people their own age communicating it to them,” said Schmidt. “So now, if we just get all those people to vote, it’s great.” 

Breaking the mold

Tucson Spotlight’s all-women team is a rarity in the media world. According to the Women’s Media Center, if women make up 41% of newsroom employees nationwide, only 26% hold leadership roles.

“Working in an all-women newsroom provides a greater sense of community,” said UA reporting intern Olivia Krupp, president of the UA Women in Journalism Association.  

Schmidt is quick to point out that this wasn’t by design. 

“We didn’t set out to create an all-women staff,” she said. “It just happened.”

The team is intentional about including diverse voices. 

“We are not going to be purposely exclusive of any voices,” Schmidt said. “If men want to join, great. The goal is to create a space where everyone feels valued.” 

The outlet is ready to grow next spring with the arrival of five more interns. 

“Every dollar we save on rent goes back into paying our reporters, so we are ready to expand,” noted Schmidt. 

A bold future 

Like most nonprofit newsrooms, Tucson Spotlight faces financial challenges. 

“We’re not sustainable yet,” Schmidt admitted. “But we want to keep the news free: how can you pretend being a pilar of democracy and charge people to get informed?” 

Despite the hurdles, with grant season ahead, the newsroom is growing. 

“We will soon be a 15 person team,” rejoiced Barnett. 

With over 160 stories published so far, Tucson Spotlight is proving that independent outlets can make a big impact. 

As the photo shoot wrapped, the team lingered on the steps, laughing and discussing upcoming stories 

“Southern Arizona has become a great example of local independent news. Look at Arizona Luminaria, Patagonia Regional Times… All sorts of outlets are just popping up everywhere,” said Schmidt. "We're the 33rd largest city in the United States, and our newspaper is a shell of what it used to be. Are we getting to a place someday where we don’t have a newspaper anymore? I don’t know. But I do not want to live in that city.” 

Arizona Sonoran News is a news service of the University of Arizona School of Journalism.