My story

Mariel has been a professional journalist even before she graduated from San Francisco State University in 1990. Her first writing job was for a San Francisco neighborhood monthly called “The Portalwood Press.” Her assignments ranged from the reforestation of Golden Gate Park to traffic congestion on West Portal Avenue. She was “paid” for her stories with copies of the newspaper, which was free.

This began a long journalism career that included stints as a news reporter for the Pulitzer Prize-winning Point Reyes Light, a weekly newspaper in windswept west Marin county, and daily newspapers, including the Riverside Press- Enterprise, Los Angeles Daily News, the Sacramento Bee, and Los Angeles Times.

Mariel also spent more than six years teaching future journalists, first as an adjunct professor of journalism at California State University, Northridge and later for the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

In October 2024, I resigned from my job editorials editor for the Los Angeles Times in protest after the paper’s owner, biotech billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, blocked the editorial board from endorsing Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.

You can read more about it here.