Jose Antonio Vargas
Encyclopedia
Jose Antonio Vargas is a Filipino journalist living and working in the United States. He is known for his coverage of HIV
, the Virginia Tech shootings, and the influence that politics and the Internet have on each other. In 2008, Vargas was part of the team which won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting
. Born in the Philippines, and raised in the United States from the age of 12, Vargas has worked for The San Francisco Chronicle, The Philadelphia Daily News, The Washington Post
, and The Huffington Post
.
In a June 2011 essay in The New York Times Magazine
, Vargas wrote that he is an "undocumented immigrant". He describes coming to the US at the age of 12, unaware until the age of 16 that his immigration status was not valid. He states that he revealed his status in order to promote dialogue about what he feels is a broken immigration system in the United States, and advocate for the DREAM Act
, which would help children in similar circumstances have a path to citizenship available to them. He was quoted as saying "I’m an American, I just don’t have the right papers".
, the Philippines. In 1993, when Vargas was a child of 12, his mother sent him to live with his grandparents in the United States without obtaining authorization for him to stay in the country permanently. He grew up in Mountain View
, California, and attended Crittenden Middle School and Mountain View High School
. Vargas did not learn of his immigration status until 1997, when he attempted to obtain a California driver's license with fraudulent identity documents provided by his family. He kept his immigration status secret, pursuing his education and trying to fit in as an American, with the help of friends and teachers, using false documents including a green card
, Filipino passport, and a driver’s license that helped him to avoid deportation and remain in the US.
In 1998, he began an internship at the Mountain View Voice, a local newspaper, and he later became a "copy boy" for the San Francisco Chronicle
. Vargas attended San Francisco State University
, gaining a degree in Political Science and Black Studies. He interned for the Philadelphia Daily News
and later The Washington Post, who hired him in 2004, immediately after his college graduation.
In 2011, Vargas wrote an essay for The New York Times Sunday Magazine, revealing that he is an "undocumented immigrant" who has spent years hiding it, in hopes that his acknowledgment of his status might raise awareness of the problem faced by undocumented people brought to America as innocent children. He is a founder of Define American,Define American a project aimed at facilitating dialogue about the DREAM Act
, which would allow such individuals a path to citizenship through education or service in the military. The essay received much media attention and was at the top of the Times "most-emailed" list the week it was published.
Vargas came out as gay in high school in 1999, a decision he describes as being "less daunting than coming out about my legal status".
When Vargas made a pitch for himself as a politics reporter for the Post, he told his editor, "You need someone to cover the presidential campaign who has a Facebook
account and who looks at YouTube
every day." Vargas went on to cover the 2008 presidential campaign. He wrote an online column called "The Clickocracy" on the Post’s website.
, part of an exodus of young talent from the paper.
Arianna Huffington introduced herself to Vargas at a Washington Press Club Foundation dinner after overhearing someone mistake him for a busboy. Vargas joined Huffington Post as Technology and Innovations Editor where he created a "Technology as Anthropology" blog and launched the Technology vertical in September 2009 and the College vertical in February 2010.
and aired on Showtime.
In September 2010, Vargas profiled Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg
in an article for The New Yorker
.
In "Students Make Connections at a Time of Total Disconnect," from April 17, 2007, Vargas reported on the role of technology in students’ experiences during the Virginia Tech shootings. He described graduate student Jamal Albarghouti running towards the gun shots when he heard them, taking out his cell phone to take a shaky, one minute video that would later air on CNN.com. "This is what this YouTube-Facebook-instant messaging generation does," Vargas wrote. "Witness. Record. Share." The article also discussed the role of Facebook.com, which students used to keep in touch during the event. Albarghouti returned to his apartment to find 279 new Facebook messages, Vargas recounted, and another student, Trey Perkins, faced a similar inundation.
Vargas contributed to the article " 'Pop, Pop, Pop': Students Down, Doors Barred, Leaps to Safety," which was published on April 17, 2007. Through interviews with eyewitnesses, the story recounts the events of the Virginia Tech shootings.
Vargas also contributed to the article "That Was the Desk I Chose to Die Under," which ran in The Washington Post on April 19, 2007. Vargas was able to gain an interview with an eyewitness to the shootings by approaching him through Facebook, he explained to GMA News. “I got him on the phone, we talked for about 25 minutes, and he was the only eyewitness we had on the story, so it was a critical part of it," Vargas explained.
HIV
Human immunodeficiency virus is a lentivirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome , a condition in humans in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive...
, the Virginia Tech shootings, and the influence that politics and the Internet have on each other. In 2008, Vargas was part of the team which won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting
Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting
The Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting is a Pulitzer Prize awarded for a distinguished example of breaking news, local reporting on news of the moment...
. Born in the Philippines, and raised in the United States from the age of 12, Vargas has worked for The San Francisco Chronicle, The Philadelphia Daily News, The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
, and The Huffington Post
The Huffington Post
The Huffington Post is an American news website and content-aggregating blog founded by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer, and Jonah Peretti, featuring liberal minded columnists and various news sources. The site offers coverage of politics, theology, media, business, entertainment, living, style,...
.
In a June 2011 essay in The New York Times Magazine
The New York Times Magazine
The New York Times Magazine is a Sunday magazine supplement included with the Sunday edition of The New York Times. It is host to feature articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors...
, Vargas wrote that he is an "undocumented immigrant". He describes coming to the US at the age of 12, unaware until the age of 16 that his immigration status was not valid. He states that he revealed his status in order to promote dialogue about what he feels is a broken immigration system in the United States, and advocate for the DREAM Act
DREAM Act
The DREAM Act is an American legislative proposal first introduced in the Senate on August 1, 2001 and most recently reintroduced there on May 11, 2011....
, which would help children in similar circumstances have a path to citizenship available to them. He was quoted as saying "I’m an American, I just don’t have the right papers".
Personal life and education
Vargas was born in AntipoloAntipolo
Antipolo is a city in the Philippines located in the province of Rizal; about 25 kilometers east of Manila. It is the largest city in the Calabarzon Region in terms of population...
, the Philippines. In 1993, when Vargas was a child of 12, his mother sent him to live with his grandparents in the United States without obtaining authorization for him to stay in the country permanently. He grew up in Mountain View
Mountain View, California
-Downtown:Mountain View has a pedestrian-friendly downtown centered on Castro Street. The downtown area consists of the seven blocks of Castro Street from the Downtown Mountain View Station transit center in the north to the intersection with El Camino Real in the south...
, California, and attended Crittenden Middle School and Mountain View High School
Mountain View High School (Mountain View, California)
Mountain View High School , one of three Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District public high schools, is located in at 3535 Truman Avenue, Mountain View, California, 94040. Mountain View High School serves a diverse student body of over 1750 students from the cities of Mountain View, Los...
. Vargas did not learn of his immigration status until 1997, when he attempted to obtain a California driver's license with fraudulent identity documents provided by his family. He kept his immigration status secret, pursuing his education and trying to fit in as an American, with the help of friends and teachers, using false documents including a green card
Green Card
Green card may refer to:* Permanent residence , known informally as a green card* Green Card , a 1990 movie whose title refers to the American document above...
, Filipino passport, and a driver’s license that helped him to avoid deportation and remain in the US.
In 1998, he began an internship at the Mountain View Voice, a local newspaper, and he later became a "copy boy" for the San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
. Vargas attended San Francisco State University
San Francisco State University
San Francisco State University is a public university located in San Francisco, California. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers over 100 areas of study from nine academic colleges...
, gaining a degree in Political Science and Black Studies. He interned for the Philadelphia Daily News
Philadelphia Daily News
The Philadelphia Daily News is a tabloid newspaper that serves Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. The newspaper is owned by Philadelphia Media Holdings which also owns Philadelphia's other major newspaper The Philadelphia Inquirer. The Daily News began publishing on March 31, 1925, under...
and later The Washington Post, who hired him in 2004, immediately after his college graduation.
In 2011, Vargas wrote an essay for The New York Times Sunday Magazine, revealing that he is an "undocumented immigrant" who has spent years hiding it, in hopes that his acknowledgment of his status might raise awareness of the problem faced by undocumented people brought to America as innocent children. He is a founder of Define American,Define American a project aimed at facilitating dialogue about the DREAM Act
DREAM Act
The DREAM Act is an American legislative proposal first introduced in the Senate on August 1, 2001 and most recently reintroduced there on May 11, 2011....
, which would allow such individuals a path to citizenship through education or service in the military. The essay received much media attention and was at the top of the Times "most-emailed" list the week it was published.
Vargas came out as gay in high school in 1999, a decision he describes as being "less daunting than coming out about my legal status".
Work for The Washington Post
Vargas was hired by The Washington Post’s Style section in 2004 to cover the video-game boom. He became known for his anecdotal coverage of the HIV epidemic in Washington. His coverage of this issue was adapted into a documentary called The Other City, released in 2010. In 2007, he was part of the Washington Post team covering the Virginia Tech shootings, earning a Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting. He also covered politics for the Post.When Vargas made a pitch for himself as a politics reporter for the Post, he told his editor, "You need someone to cover the presidential campaign who has a Facebook
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
account and who looks at YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
every day." Vargas went on to cover the 2008 presidential campaign. He wrote an online column called "The Clickocracy" on the Post’s website.
Work for The Huffington Post
In July 2009, Vargas left the Post to join The Huffington PostThe Huffington Post
The Huffington Post is an American news website and content-aggregating blog founded by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer, and Jonah Peretti, featuring liberal minded columnists and various news sources. The site offers coverage of politics, theology, media, business, entertainment, living, style,...
, part of an exodus of young talent from the paper.
Arianna Huffington introduced herself to Vargas at a Washington Press Club Foundation dinner after overhearing someone mistake him for a busboy. Vargas joined Huffington Post as Technology and Innovations Editor where he created a "Technology as Anthropology" blog and launched the Technology vertical in September 2009 and the College vertical in February 2010.
Other work
Vargas's articles on the AIDS epidemic in the nation's capital inspired a feature-length documentary, The Other City, which he co-produced and wrote. Directed by Susan Koch and co-produced by Sheila Johnson, it premiered at the 2010 Tribeca Film FestivalTribeca Film Festival
The Tribeca Film Festival is a film festival founded in 2002 by Jane Rosenthal, Robert De Niro and Craig Hatkoff in a response to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the consequent loss of vitality in the TriBeCa neighborhood in Lower Manhattan.The mission of the festival...
and aired on Showtime.
In September 2010, Vargas profiled Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is an American computer programmer and Internet entrepreneur. He is best known for co-creating the social networking site Facebook, of which he is chief executive and president...
in an article for The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
.
Pulitzer Prize
Vargas authored or contributed to three Washington Post articles about the Virginia Tech shootings that were awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting.In "Students Make Connections at a Time of Total Disconnect," from April 17, 2007, Vargas reported on the role of technology in students’ experiences during the Virginia Tech shootings. He described graduate student Jamal Albarghouti running towards the gun shots when he heard them, taking out his cell phone to take a shaky, one minute video that would later air on CNN.com. "This is what this YouTube-Facebook-instant messaging generation does," Vargas wrote. "Witness. Record. Share." The article also discussed the role of Facebook.com, which students used to keep in touch during the event. Albarghouti returned to his apartment to find 279 new Facebook messages, Vargas recounted, and another student, Trey Perkins, faced a similar inundation.
Vargas contributed to the article " 'Pop, Pop, Pop': Students Down, Doors Barred, Leaps to Safety," which was published on April 17, 2007. Through interviews with eyewitnesses, the story recounts the events of the Virginia Tech shootings.
Vargas also contributed to the article "That Was the Desk I Chose to Die Under," which ran in The Washington Post on April 19, 2007. Vargas was able to gain an interview with an eyewitness to the shootings by approaching him through Facebook, he explained to GMA News. “I got him on the phone, we talked for about 25 minutes, and he was the only eyewitness we had on the story, so it was a critical part of it," Vargas explained.
External links
- Jose Antonio Vargas, official website
- Define American, founder
- Column archive at The Huffington PostThe Huffington PostThe Huffington Post is an American news website and content-aggregating blog founded by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer, and Jonah Peretti, featuring liberal minded columnists and various news sources. The site offers coverage of politics, theology, media, business, entertainment, living, style,...