Today we’d like to introduce you to Andrew Villanueva.
Hi Andrew, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
My journey began in 2009 at San Pedro High School. I took a journalism class with some friends; mostly in support of one of their interests. I instantly fell in love with it! I always knew I wanted to be a writer but wasn’t sure what my field or style would be.
While pursuing journalism in college, I would spend hours listening to the police scanner with my brother and began posting local crime updates on Twitter.
I eventually gave that up as it seemed as though it wasn’t gaining much traction.
The next 8 years of my life consisted of multiple retail leadership and asset protection jobs.
I felt stuck.
Fast forward to early 2018, I found myself in an existential crisis where I just felt like I wasn’t doing anything productive with my life. That year, I also spent some time in the hospital after a terrible accident. I would wake up every morning in pain and feel like if my life had ended at that very moment, I would not have been proud.
While in recovery from my accident, I spent a lot of time listening to the police scanner with my brother. He had been a freelance photojournalist for a while, and we always liked watching police pursuits and the TV show COPS when we were younger.
It finally clicked for me one day.
I spent the last of the money I had left to my name on a cheap 2003 Buick LeSabre and a digital Sony camera.
My real journey began.
I would go to my assistant manager job at CVS from 1p.m. To 10p.m. Once I was out, I would sit in the parking lot for hours listening to multiple police and fire scanners waiting for calls to come out. I would respond to these calls and take photos and videos and try to sell them to multiple news outlets.
I was repeating this process every single day for almost 2 years, and I would even stay up until 5am to see if any of my stories made it to the morning news.
I rarely saw stories involving my hometown or local areas and I was determined to give us a voice too.
I made a handful of sales during this time, but I eventually had my most important interaction with a news agency.
There was an incident that had occurred in my hometown of San Pedro. Two teenagers were shot and killed right in front of their home. I sent in my video that night and called the agencies to let them know I submitted something to review. One particular agency looked up the location on his map and said, “Yeah, this is probably going to be gang-related. Thanks anyway…”
He hung up on me.
The next few days were very frustrating for me. My whole mission was to give a voice to the areas that I grew up in. It felt as though we weren’t getting the same attention in the media based on the fact that we were seen as ‘lower class’ or in his words “gang related.”
Shortly after that, I began posting stories and videos on Facebook and I was getting great feedback from the community. I grew a nice following for myself, and I was soon approached by a long-time friend of mine, who was also starting a freelance journalism page. We agreed to collaborate on a page together and I contacted every local crime group and follower that I had to follow it.
The page was around 100 followers when I began, and within the next few days, we were already at 4,000 people. What made us so different was the fact that we would go live on police or fire department incidents and show the community what was happening at the moment.
The community loved it!
Whenever he was live, I would spam his videos across every platform I could find, and we continued to grow our total viewers.
We eventually had a falling out and agreed to go our separate ways.
I found myself back at square one again, but this time, I knew where my passion was, and I knew I wasn’t going to stop.
I started a brand-new page, but I knew I wasn’t going to be able to reach out to all of those same groups that I did before. This was going to be from ground zero.
We eventually grew our following to 11,000 followers locally, with a reach of over 100,000 viewers weekly on Facebook alone.
ANKR PRESS is 100% volunteer work from our admins, myself and occasional contributions from the community members. We bring breaking news stories, as they are happening, to our community,
Many local citizens turn to independent journalism pages on social media as their first source of information these days. I feel honored to be one of the many choices to provide these updates and humbled by the support that I have received over the years.
ANKR PRESS provides in-the-moment reporting on Facebook (primary), Instagram, X, and now TikTok.
Everything I have achieved so far has been built from the bottom up — multiple times.
Life has slowed me down on many occasions, but I believe that as long as I have breath in me, I will continue my dream of building this page to a reputable independent news source.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I’ve encountered quite a few obstacles along this journey, but I have a few that really slowed me down.
Considering I was responding to multiple incidents across the South Bay and Harbor area every day — the wear and tear on my cars were extraordinary. I had my transmission go out on two vehicles since I started.
I’m on my 3rd now, and I’ve slowed down tremulously.
I’ve had my car stolen twice; both times with equipment that I would use for journalism. (Camera gear, safety gear, etc.)
I’ve also had to replace police scanners, lenses, and other equipment I would use on scene. All of these funds really take a toll on you when you’re working as a volunteer.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Aside from ANKR PRESS, I began to take photography seriously as a hobbyist and learned to find my peace in it.
At one point in my journey, I began to despise holding a camera because everything that was going on through the lens was pure chaos.
I recently found peace in cleaning and repairing old film cameras and learning the joys of photography.
It’s helped me to define my true purpose in life.
No matter where I am, there is a lens in front of me, ready to tell a story.
Can you share something surprising about yourself?
I come from a very humble and modest childhood. We struggled a lot in my household, and I had many difficulties with learning throughout my schooling.
Many have told me throughout the years that I appear to be highly educated and well-spoken.
The reality is I struggled a lot with being extroverted and used that time to read or learn something new.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: Ankrpress
- Facebook: Ankrpress
Image Credits
Raphael Richardson
Chris Villanueva
Andrew Villanueva
