Mireya Navarro, a groundbreaking reporter, Pulitzer Prize winner and book author, passed away this week after a long private battle with cancer. She was 69.
The National Association of Hispanic Journalists mourns her death. She was an NAHJ lifetime member who supported NAHJ programs and frequently attended NAHJ national conferences, including in New Orleans in July.
Known to friends as Mia, she was an accomplished journalist at the New York Times before she launched the Brennan Center for Justice En Español website, which advocates for democratic freedoms in Spanish.
Navarro was a native of San Juan, Puerto Rico and reported extensively throughout Latin America.
She was a devoted champion of inclusive journalism, the Spanish-language and social justice in many forms.
Navarro met her husband, Jim Sterngold, at the 2001 NAHJ national conference in Phoenix when both worked for the New York Times. He posted a tribute on Facebook:
“I write to share the heartbreaking news that my wife, Mia Navarro, passed away yesterday after a 9-year battle with breast cancer. Mia was, through and through, a journalist and had a distinguished 28-year career at The New York Times.
“She was very devoted to the paper, loved her years there, loved her close friends and colleagues and loved that she could contribute to the journalism on many important topics, from AIDS and the environment to 9/11 and public housing in New York.
“She wrote an article in the Times series, “How Race Is Lived in America,” which won a Pulitzer in 2001. She worked in Metro, was the Miami Bureau Chief for 5 years and worked in the Los Angeles bureau of the Times after we married so she could join me there.”
“Mia had a wonderful post-Times career, too. She joined the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU Law School as a senior media person then conceived, designed, built and then ran, as Editor in Chief, Brennan’s Spanish-language website, Brennan en Español. Her innovation significantly expanded Brennan’s reach into a community heavily impacted by the social justice issues Brennan illuminates and fights for.”
Navarro wrote two non-fiction books “Stepdog” and “Green Wedding.” She was a world traveler, great cook and dancer who enjoyed the beat of life.
Her longtime friend and NAHJ lifetime member Edna Negron said Navarro mentored young journalists as an adjunct professor in New York City and directed a program that pairs high school journalism students with public libraries to cover local news in communities that have lost newspapers.
“Mia was an avid theater and music lover. Her passion for Latin music and dance, in particular, connected her with the artists that she supported in New York, Miami and Puerto Rico. She loved dancing and celebrating her Puerto Rican culture in the numerous concerts and festivals that she attended, often with claves in her hand moving to the salsa beat,” Negrón said.
Former NAHJ president Evelyn Hernandez of New York City met Mia at an NAHJ conference in the late 1980s when Navarro was a reporter at the San Francisco Examiner.
“A proud Boricua from the island, she also wrote fun features such as a story on the mallorca, a sweet, puffy, Puerto Rican pastry, and the ongoing debate between those who dance salsa on the two, versus those who dance old-school, on the one,” Hernandez said.
“She launched the Spanish-language website Brennan En Español, a monthly newsletter, and as she put it, was ‘dedicated to informing the Latino community about issues of democracy and justice.’ We will remember her con cariño y orgullo,” Hernandez said.