Editor’s note: This story first appeared on palabra, the digital news site by the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
Traffic had once again ground to a halt on the interstate highway that cuts through the Texas border city of Laredo, and Priscilla Villarreal did what any good reporter would. The social media personality and citizen journalist grabbed her phone and texted a police source, fishing for information.
Villarreal consistently breaks news about day-to-day crime and traffic incidents in the city of 250,000 — almost all Latino. The audience knows her as La Gordiloca, an affectionate nickname that translates to something like “Crazy Chubby Lady.” It’s a moniker she embraces. Her “Lagordiloca News Laredo Tx” Facebook page is often the first with videos from the scene of breaking news.
She communicates with more than 200,000 followers through meandering, expletive-filled Facebook Live streams. They’re mostly in Spanish and peppered with snark and slang particular to the stretch of Texas-Mexico border where she lives. In unfiltered, often rambling videos shot from her phone, Villarreal hypes local businesses, rants about city and county corruption scandals, and occasionally fundraises for charities.
Villarreal makes news almost as often as she breaks it. Her rush to be first has generated some embarrassing errors with wide-reaching consequences — and spawned a subgenre of Laredo Morning Times stories setting the record straight.
Yet, she maintains a loyal following and is quick to note that her audience eclipses established local media outlets like the Morning Times, my former employer.
Her popularity “has to do with the way I say things,” Villarreal tells me. “Because my news is raw. I’m not editing anything. No sugarcoating anything. I put it out there.”
She’s been such a thorn in the side of local officials that, by the time she sent texts about the highway traffic jam in 2017, they already had her in their crosshairs….
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