Pop culture correspondent Nina Terrero co-hosts The Collective, Powered by Vevo on NUVOtv
Nina Terrero spent the night of the Oscars live tweeting about the fashion hits and misses of the stars, Kerry Washington’s eagerness for pizza and every award Gravity won.
As a correspondent for Entertainment Weekly, the Lawrence native has made a career of keeping up with the pulse of pop culture as a respected Latina reporter in entertainment news.
But at the same time she began working for EW in February, Terrero, 29, was also preparing to launch a second endeavor; on March 6, the first episode of The Collective, Powered by Vevo launched on NUVOtv featuring Terrero as an on-air co-host.
The Collective, which airs at 10 p.m. on Thursdays, highlights music, fashion and entertainment that represents the culture and interests of U.S. Hispanics.
“I think we’re already really hitting the nail on the head when it comes to sharing content that is really reflective of where Latinos are going and how far we’ve come from regarding our contributions to the entertainment base,” Terrero said. “The show isn’t about us feeding the public some type of dialogue regarding this amazing artist or this great fashion show. What we’re trying to do is really paint a portrait from the inside out of these really amazing collective voices.”
NUVOtv’s goal of appealing to all Latino interests caught Terrero’s attention after the entertainment journalist attended a presentation about the network last year; with her Puerto Rican and Dominican heritage, Terrero not only related to the NUVOtv audience—she was the audience.
She approached Lynnette Ramirez, vice president of programming at NUVOtv, about her interest and willingness to be involved with the network if the opportunity ever presented itself. Sure enough, in August 2013, Terrero got the call about auditions for The Collective.
But Terrero’s latest venture is still one of her many accomplishments as a reporter.
She received the Public Health Education through Media Leadership Award from the National Hispanic Medical Association in July 2012, and was named one of the 50 Top Latino Voices to Follow on Twitter and Rising Stars You Should Watch In Social Media & Journalism by the Huffington Post in July 2012 and May 2013, respectively.
After working her way up from a role as an assistant to become a reporter covering mainstream U.S. news at ABC, Terrero discovered that the Hispanic point of view was something she wanted to ensure was heard clearly. So when an opportunity opened up for her to join NBC Latino, Terrero made what she called a natural move to report that perspective.
“I realized that perhaps there wasn’t as much attention paid to the specific Latino angle as I would have liked,” Terrero said. “Yes, Latinos are the mainstream, but more often than not, the Hispanic source is not considered when you are looking at a larger story…We are part of the news, we are part of the dialogue, but we are not necessarily always represented to the fullest capacity, and I think that as a Latino in the newsroom, I became very conscious of that.”
In her work with NBC Latino,Terrero has reported on all things entertainment, from film and fashion to books and celebrities. She has highlighted Latino cuisine and contributed to more hard-hitting news topics including public education, healthcare and politics.
Terrero has interviewed a number of big name stars—including Jennifer Lopez, Javier Bardem, Salma Hayek and Eva Longoria—and her work has been featured and recognized on major media outlets such as E! News, Latina Magazine and The Huffington Post, to name a few. Terrero also hosted a weekly, 90-second video commentary “Celebrity Rewind.”
One of her chief accomplishments, Terrero said, was breaking the news and generating in-depth coverage about Mexican-American singer Jenni Rivera, who died at age 43 in a plane crash Dec. 9, 2012.
Though she has made a name for herself as an entertainment and celebrity buff, Terrero said she’s even more proud of how she got there.
“I can speak to pop culture, and I can obsess over Game of Thrones and The Americans, and I can have that dialogue,” Terrero said, “but there also is a side of me that’s very serious and very academically minded and someone who thinks about strategy and opportunity and really thinks about what I do as in the greater context of U.S. history and my contribution to it in terms of being a voice of pop culture.”
Terrero credits her success breaking into the world of media and entertainment as a result of her personal greatest achievement of obtaining two Ivy league degrees; she graduated in 2007 with a B.A. in government from Cornell University, and in 2010 earned her masters in political science from Columbia University.
“I am proud that I’ve worked really, really hard to get those degrees…it took a lot of blood, sweat and tears to earn my way through school and to pay for it myself as well,” Tererro said.
Terrero grew up in Piscataway until age 13, when she and her family moved to the Liberty Green development in Lawrence near Quaker Bridge Mall, where Terrero snagged her first job as a Victoria’s Secret employee.
But as Terrero grew up with parents who were educators—Terrero’s mother was an ESL teacher for several years before homeschooling her daughters—academics were a high priority in the home.
“We probably had half an hour of cartoons daily, and the rest was unlimited PBS if we wanted,” Terrero said, “but it was always really important for my parents to stress reading and creativity, and as an extension of that, I think that my interest in academia never felt forced.”
Terrero recalled weekly excursions to Barnes and Noble after church on Sundays, when her mother allowed Terrero and her sister to each pick out a few books to take home, where much of their time was devoted to reading and researching topics in encyclopedias.
An opportunity to participate in the New Jersey Scholars Program at The Lawrenceville School gave Terrero a glimpse of even bigger ideas. She had applied to the program because one of her neighbors had participated in it, and the summer before her junior year of high school, Terrero was one of the promising young students accepted into the intensive, interdisciplinary program.
That program, Terrero said, gave her the confidence to apply to Cornell, and she hoped to “pay it forward” with her work on The Collective by inspiring other young students to have big dreams.
Terrero moved to New York in 2008 and still lives there now. The Collective is based and filmed in L.A., so Terrero does have quite a commute once a week. But aside from the necessary travel, Terrero said her two positions complement each other rather than hinder her—and it doesn’t hurt that she also thrives working under pressure and meeting deadlines.
“We (at Entertainment Weekly) are really sharing of the moment material that’s really amazing, and I’m able to take that to The Collective and showcase my unique perspective on what I’m doing at Entertainment Weekly and vice versa,” she said, noting that she has full support from her editors to keep “carrying the Latino torch.”
The Collective, Powered by Vevo airs at 10 p.m. Thursdays on NUVOtv. For more information, go online to mynuvotv.com.
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