{"id":231558,"date":"2026-03-22T19:25:24","date_gmt":"2026-03-22T19:25:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/231558\/"},"modified":"2026-03-22T19:25:24","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T19:25:24","slug":"brilliant-nyt-journalist-behind-cesar-chavez-investigation-is-fresno-state-alum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/231558\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Brilliant\u2019 NYT journalist behind Cesar Chavez investigation is Fresno State alum"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the journalists who authored the bombshell New York Times investigation that exposed how civil rights leader Cesar Chavez<\/a> allegedly groomed and abused children and raped women is a Fresno native.<\/p>\n

New York Times California editor-at-large Manny Fernandez graduated from Fresno State\u2019s journalism program in 1997, where he wrote for The Collegian<\/a> student newspaper and left a lasting impression on his instructors and classmates.<\/p>\n

Fernandez, 52, said growing up in Fresno gave him unique insights into the farmworker community.<\/p>\n

\u201cI understood this world very much and in a personal way,\u201d he said in a phone interview with The Bee.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was important to me to work on this story because I\u2019m investigating the very community I\u2019m from,\u201d Fernandez said in a video accompanying the investigation<\/a>. \u201cMy grandparents started out as farmworkers here in the Central Valley of California.\u201d<\/p>\n

The investigation was co-reported by Sarah Hurtes, a New York Times reporter<\/a> working on international investigations from Brussels.<\/p>\n

Since the story\u2019s publication, the reaction across California and the country has been swift and decisive, with plans to rename schools, holidays and streets bearing Chavez\u2019s name underway.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, I knew there would be big consequences. We didn\u2019t know exactly what would happen. But it\u2019s disturbing. It\u2019s devastating. He was a hero for many people,\u201d Fernandez said. \u201cAnd I think that this tells us we need to know who our heroes are, whether they\u2019re living or dead.\u201d<\/p>\n

A statue of Cesar Chavez at Fresno State was taken down Friday. Fresno City Council is moving forward with plans to rename Cesar Chavez Boulevard.<\/a> During a Council discussion on Thursday, Councilmember Miguel Arias acknowledged the importance of journalism and truth telling.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a reminder that journalism is essential to accountability in our system of democracy, and I want to thank the journalists for that. Although what they reported has been devastating to many of us, it was necessary and even when the truth is painful, we need it,\u201d Arias said.<\/p>\n

Fernandez was born and raised in Fresno, where he was \u201cbit by the journalism bug\u201d at a young age.<\/p>\n

His writing career started in eighth grade, when he was editor of the Viking Times at Sacred Heart middle school. He then went on to write for his high school paper at San Joaquin Memorial High.<\/p>\n

During the summer between his freshman and sophomore years of high school, he became an \u201cunofficial Fresno Bee reporter\u201d as part of a journalism mentorship program in which he spent time shadowing and interviewing staff reporters in the newsroom. He still remembers writing a feature story about \u201cTen Ways to Beat the Heat in Fresno.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a Fresno State student, Fernandez wrote and edited for The Collegian as well as for Insight, the department overseeing campus publications. He also contributed to La Voz de Aztlan, an ethnic supplement to The Collegian student newspaper born out of the Chicano activism of the 1960s<\/a>. As a student, he also interned at The Madera Tribune and wrote about the local agriculture industry.<\/p>\n

Lisa Bell, a communications professional at Fresno State, overlapped with Fernandez during their college journalism years. Bell said she was impressed with the depth of reporting, research and details in the Times investigation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I saw Manny\u2019s name in the byline as one of the project\u2019s two reporters, it made sense. Even in college, Manny\u2019s writing stood out,\u201d Bell said. \u201cManny\u2019s writing was always exemplary, and right out of the gate after earning his degree, he went on to do great work.\u201d<\/p>\n

After graduating, he worked as a reporter with The San Francisco Chronicle for three years before joining the staff of The Washington Post in the summer of 2000. A series he wrote in 1998 on homeless runaways for the San Francisco Chronicle was the newspaper\u2019s Pulitzer Prize nominee for feature writing.<\/p>\n

He joined the New York Times in 2005.<\/p>\n

When asked in a 2021 interview with the nonprofit journalist organization CCNMA: Latino Journalists of California<\/a>, how he balances his Latino identity with his role as a journalist, Fernandez said he searches for stories about the working class and voices that otherwise wouldn\u2019t be in the New York Times.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m looking to do stories that capture my own upbringing and the neighborhood where I was born and raised in Fresno,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Today, Fernandez is considered one of the most prominent journalists to emerge from the Fresno State journalism program.<\/p>\n

Tom Uribes, a longtime public affairs and journalism professional and former board member of the Fresno State Chicano Alumni Club, met Manny Fernandez when he was a high school student. Uribes helped organize the Minority Journalism Workshop at Fresno State \u2014 a media training for high schoolers through the California Chicano News Media Association-Fresno Chapter and the university\u2019s Chicano Journalism Student Association. Fernandez participated in one of these two-week student workshops designed to open doors for journalism careers for underrepresented ethnic minority students.<\/p>\n

Uribes recalled that since a young age, Fernandez was \u201cbrilliant.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was always one of the best,\u201d Uribes said. \u201cIt\u2019s just amazing to see that he\u2019s flourished. He\u2019s doing what we hoped he\u2019d do.\u201d<\/p>\n

For future Valley journalists entering the industry during a difficult period of shrinking newsrooms, media distrust and the free press under attack, Fernandez\u2019s advice is to stick with it.<\/p>\n

\u201cJournalism has been a powerful force in my life. And that force was honed and sharpened in Fresno and at Fresno State,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also a force for good, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to learn the truth, it\u2019s hard to report out the truth, but in doing that, it is just a very rewarding, important job,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the journalists who authored the bombshell New York Times investigation that exposed how civil rights leader…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":231559,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[7,16847,112,3879,8019,114,113,742,104967],"class_list":["post-231558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-california","tag-cesar-chavez","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-bee","tag-fresno-city-council","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news","tag-fresno-state","tag-manny-fernandez"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231558\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}