As a reporter for El Diario, the city’s largest Spanish-language newspaper, and Spanish-language editor of the Norwood News in the Bronx, Javier Goméz provided coverage of public affairs and kept readers abreast of important developments. As an assistant press secretary in the office of the Bronx Borough President, he has worked with community groups, business organizations, and the press on a broad range of matters. To combine the two and take a giant stride toward his goal of becoming a financial journalist, Goméz enrolled in the Master’s Program in Business Journalism at Baruch.
“One of the great things about this program,” he says, is that “you know that what you learn here you can take out tomorrow and use on the job.”
Goméz joined the master’s program in its inaugural semester (fall 1999), and after two years of part-time study he is attending classes full time to finish his degree this spring. In addition to the course requirements, Goméz is writing a lengthy master’s thesis on the growth of the evangelical Latino church and the Christian music it embraces.
Born one of five children in the rural town of Lajas, Puerto Rico, Goméz finished high school in the city of Manaté and then, on the advice of his high school mentor, came to New York to attend City College. He graduated magna cum laude with a degree in broadcast journalism. “Now,” he says, “I’m learning about finance, for example, so I could actually pursue a career in that direction,” as a financial journalist or a player in the business world.
Goméz’s expertise on political life in New York City—he worked with former Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer during his competitive campaign for the Democratic mayoral nomination last year—has been a great asset to his fellow students and the journalism faculty, said Professor Josh Mills, director of the Master’s Program in Business Journalism. Goméz helped arrange meetings with Bronx officials and business executives to discuss economic development, Mills says, and also arranged for Ferrer to speak at the annual publication of Dollars & $ense, the magazine published by Baruch’s undergraduate and graduate journalism programs (see pp. 6–7).
Goméz, in his “spare” time, is an actor and was featured in Baruch’s spring 2000 production of Stephen Sondheim’s Passion. Since arriving in New York, he has made his home with his older sister in the Schuylerville area of the Bronx.
“With knowledge you can do anything,” he says. “It gives you social, economic, and cultural flexibility. And no one can ever take that away from you.”

—TG