During his childhood and early adolescence Jorge Rivera Nieves, He has been in journalism for 55 years, including 46 years at Telemundo, and never thought of becoming a journalist.
But as the saying goes, when someone is born with a hammer, nails fall from the sky. “I wanted to be a lawyer,” Rivera Nieves recalls in the latest edition of this journalist’s podcast. “I always liked having briefcases and papers with me,” he adds.
He also says he was “shy” for a long time. “When I started letting go, I was in the middle of it,” he says. “I got into journalism by accident,” he says.
The turning point that led him to journalism came at the age of 17. Eligio Armstrong, a teacher at the Central School in Santurce, where Rivera Nieves studied, noted that he had the voice of an announcer and that he should go into that class.
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In addition, Armstrong, whom Rivera Nieves describes as “a black man with a strong personality who had represented us at the Olympics, a clubman role model and an authority,” knew who was the manager of Wapa Radio, the leading radio station in Puerto Rico at the time, which was then part of what later became Hearts Newspapers, one of the largest media companies in the USA for decades.
Still, Rivera Nieves didn’t want to be interested journalism. At 17, he was no stranger to work. In fact, he had been working since he was eleven. He worked as a delivery boy for shoppers, as a shoeshine boy, as an assistant in a grocery store and at Almacenes Rodríguez, where he began contributing to social security at the age of 14. The area where the station was located wasn’t strange either. I was in Santurcehis neighborhood.
It was simply because he had never imagined journalism as a job he wanted to pursue, and he still planned to go to university and study law. But Armstrong didn’t give up. “He yes, not me. Until the moment came when I couldn’t say no anymore,” remembers Rivera Nieves.
Started in Wapa Radio 1968 as an apprentice at the age of 17. When he was at the station and saw the work of the journalists, announcers and producers up close, he began to feel the passion of journalism. He took the news cables home with him and, locked in his room, recorded himself reading the news on a device of his time to perfect himself in this skill.
But ready or not, there soon seemed to be a real opportunity to read news on the air. It was a Sunday evening. The announcer, whose job it was to read news segments for five minutes every hour between 6:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m., did not appear. The one who finished his shift couldn’t stay.
“Right now I see someone saying, ‘Look at this little boy,'” Rivera Nieves remembers. So suddenly, without waiting, it was his turn. “I still remember the Temblequera clearly,” he recalls.
“That’s where the perreo started,” says the experienced communicator, who at 72 is still active and current and is also working on his memoirs.
Not everything went smoothly in his first years as a journalist. He continued his studies with the idea of becoming a lawyer, and journalism began to fulfill him more and more. But at some point he was fired from Wapa Radio in retaliation for trying to organize employees into a union. He ultimately won the wrongful termination case and was reinstated to his position.
“It was a nice learning experience,” he says of this situation.
Rivera Nieves learned this in 1977 from Juan Ramón “Junior” Abrams, also an experienced journalist and communicator Telemundo He was in the process of starting a newscast and recruiting reporters, and he had been recommended. Once again, Rivera Nieves reacted hesitantly when the opportunity presented itself.
“I underestimated myself. “I thought I was fat, short, big-faced, hairy, eighty-something, I didn’t have the looks for TV,” says Rivera Nieves.
At Abrams’ urging, he finally took part in the interview, passed the tests and was a television reporter a week later. “I arrived rushed again. On the radio it was Eligio Armstrong and on TV it was Junior Abrams,” admits Rivera Nieves.
The veteran host realizes that being a television personality can feed anyone’s ego. “We all have this boy named Ego. We have to learn to domesticate it and obey it,” he says.
Once, early in his career, while shopping at a supermarket on Barbosa Avenue, his ego changed. Rivera Nieves tells it this way: “A lady comes up and says to me, ‘Hey, young man, are you the new guy on the news?’ And I: “Yes, ma’am, at your command.” The ego is, you know, cool. At the moment the lady, as they say in the country, backs away, looks at me intently and says: ‘Listen to me’, but with anger: ‘I thought you were taller.’”
Events like these, which remind him that in reality Rivera Nieves has never stopped being the “Georgie” of Santurce, have prevented his anger from rising. Anyone who has interacted with him knows that Rivera Nieves is a simple, affable man who loves cooking, reading, bohemian life and, in his own words, “vacilón.”
“I know where my roots lie,” he says.
Over time, Rivera Nieves understood why he once wanted to become a lawyer: he wanted to defend truth and justice. He gave up the idea of studying law, but not the desire to defend truth and justice. He just found another platform for it.
“Over the years I’ve found, wow, I can achieve these goals in journalism and it’s a broader forum, not as limited as the court,” he says.