Roberto Rodriguez teaches in the University of Arizona's Mexican-American studies department and is a syndicated columnist with Chronicle Features, Universal Press Syndicate and New America Media.

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When one of my students, Grecia Ramirez, a talented writer, artist and photographer, wrote a story for the Tucson Citizen a couple of months ago, she indicated that she would like to become a journalist upon graduation. One reader cynically questioned why anyone — with newspapers closing nationwide — would want to enter the journalism profession.

The truth is, the death of the newspaper industry has been incorrectly prognosticated more than once. The advent of radio and television surely spelled its doom, just as the Internet nowadays purportedly also spells its doom.

Yet even if newspapers were dying, it's not the medium that's important. What is important and what is needed at a time of information overload is hard-nosed watchdog journalism and the ability to critically analyze the world around us.

I say this having recently taught a class on the History of Red-Brown Journalism & Communications at the University of Arizona, and I also say this having written since 1972.

My students accomplished many things in this historic class, including creating a newspaper: El Coraje: La Nueva Generacion (coraje translates to outrage and courage). They did this after having met the original writers of Tucson's El Coraje Newspaper from the 1960s, including Salomon Baldenegro, Cecilia Cruz, Guadalupe Castillo and Congressman Raúl Grijalva.

They also mounted a historic exhibit at the university's main library on the topic of the class. While it coincided with the 200-year celebration of Latino journalism in this country, it also included an overview of Mesoamerican codices — books that show that people of Mexican/Central American descent have actually been writing for several thousand years.

What they also found in their research is that contrary to what many historians say, both men and women were writers in ancient times, and both were publishers, editors and writers during the 1800s and early 1900s.

Many women were journalists in the classic sense of the word, but many were also revolutionaries. And they are not nameless. Some include: Juana Gutierrez, Estela Ramirez and Teresita Urrea. All wrote in both countries prior to and during the Mexican Revolution of 1910.

Adela Sloss-Vento wrote about civil rights in Texas during the 1920s. Arizonan Rebecca Munoz Gutierrez wrote in the 1930s and 1940s for The Mexican Voice. So did her husband, Felix Gutierrez Sr.

What they found is that whenever groups of people have felt disempowered, marginalized and voiceless, they have created their own media — to tell their own stories and narratives.

Historically, this has meant the creation of alternative media. However, today virtually everyone feels powerless or alienated by the large multinational media corporations. That is what has been fueling the explosion of the Internet — a belief that only the powerful have voices. The Internet seemingly equalizes this inequity.

Regardless of the medium, it is certain that civil society will always need journalists such as Grecia Ramirez, either to pursue the truth, to keep government and corporations in check, to document history or for the purposes of keeping memories alive.

Amazingly, my students overwhelmingly wanted not an electronic newspaper, but one they could hold in their hands. Perhaps it's because of a sense of permanence that Web sites, blogs, instant messaging and texting cannot provide.