WE WON AGAIN!
InquireFirst wins three international environmental journalism awards in 2024
InquireFirst just learned that we have been awarded a third international journalism award for our coverage of climate change and the environment.
In October 2024, the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ) recognized our multimedia project SOS: Climate Change Threatens Our Traditional Foods with Second Place Honorable Mention in the Outstanding Explanatory Reporting, Small (newsroom) category.
The SEJ Awards are the world’s largest and most comprehensive environmental journalism competition. This year, judges and subject-matter experts, including journalists and professors, read, listened and viewed 532 entries in 10 categories.
In recognizing our project, the SEJ judges said the reporting “is a sharp reminder of the unfair burden climate change imposes upon developing economies and Indigenous cultures where threatened traditional foods are staples. It is also a stark reminder for those in developed agricultural economies that climate change is an unwelcome guest at their own dinner tables who poses threats to global food security. Thought provoking, eloquent, powerful and sweeping in scope.”
This is the second international award that has recognized our climate change project. In July 2024, Covering Climate Now recognized our project as a winner in the Food & Agriculture category.
Covering Climate Now received 1,250 entries for this year’s awards from journalists in dozens of countries. We are honored and thrilled that our Historias Sin Fronteras project written by a team of environmental journalists in Venezuela, Colombia, Bolivia and Panama is among the winners.
Our congratulations to the talented and committed and journalists who spent several months researching and writing the stories! They are:
Johanna Osorio, Venezuela
María Clara Valencia, Colombia
Ruth Vargas, Bolivia
Sonia Tejada, Panama
InquireFirst awarded a reporting grant to these journalists during our day-long Historias Sin Fronteras (HSF) workshop at the World Conference of Science Journalists in Medellín in March 2023. After making a compelling pitch in a session attended by almost 50 Latin American science writers, their project was selected to receive a grant by HSF co-founders Iván Carrillo, who edited the project, and Lynne Walker, executive director of InquireFirst.
The 2024 panel of Covering Climate Now Award judges said:
“Arepas, pabéllon, bandeja paisa, and even rice itself: Many of Latin America’s staple foods, dishes that have defined culture for generations, are at risk due to extreme weather and declining crop yields. For Historias Sin Fronteras, journalists from across the region tell three interconnected stories that ask readers to contemplate climate change from the vantage points of their kitchen tables.
“Serving up intimate human stories with ample helpings of data and mouth-watering food photography, the stories impressively encapsulate many of the complex ties between climate change and agriculture and food. If more food writing dovetailed with climate reporting like this, we would all be better informed eaters.”
In April 2024, our multimedia project titled Traces of Oil in the Peruvian Amazon won Third Place in the Fetisov Journalism Awards in the category of Excellence in Environmental Journalism.
This project, meticulously reported and beautifully written by journalists Barbara Fraser, Marilez Tellez and Leonardo Tellez in Peru and photographed by Ginebra Peña, put an international spotlight on the devastating impact of 50 years of oil exploration in the Peruvian Amazon. The project was edited by Bolivian environmental journalist Eduardo Franco Berton, founder of RAIBolivia.org.
Barbara Fraser, a freelance journalist who has lived in Peru for more than 30 years, and Marilez Tello, an indigenous journalist working at Radio Ucamara on the banks of Peru’s Marañón River, traveled to Istanbul for the April 2024 award ceremony.
Some 400 entries from 96 countries were submitted for this year’s Fetisov Journalism Awards — and more than 100 of those entries were in the Excellence in Environmental Journalism Category.
Fraser said, “It was interesting to see how many of the (Fetisov) winners are freelancers. It made me realize how important projects like InquireFirst are. Without grants, it’s next to impossible to do the kind of reporting that wins this kind of award.”
Most of the $10,000 in prize money will be used by Radio Ucamara to expand its reach to more indigenous communities in Peru’s Amazon.
We are also excited to report that a team of four early-career journalists in Quito, Ecuador, whose compassionate and data-driven project In the bubble: how to survive Down Syndrome in Ecuador was awarded Honorable Mention for Reporting in Digital Media by the National Journalists’ Union of Ecuador in February 2024.
Gabriela Coba, an Ecuadorian journalist with Primicias, Kevin Hidalgo with Revista Vistazo, Emilia Paz y Miño with GK Ecuador and Manuel Novik with Plan V, produced their in-depth project in just six weeks during our Voces Emergentes Ecuador program in the summer of 2023.
Working as a team and guided by editor Gabriel Pasquini, a columnist with The Washington Post, the four journalists researched, wrote and published their multimedia project in August 2023.
In more good news, HSF editor Iván Carrillo was recognized by Covering Climate Now in a separate category for a short documentary that he and an international team of journalists produced, “Glaciers: A World Without Ice?”
The judges called his work “a model documentary” and said, “At a time when many people’s understanding of climate change is still limited, we need more well-crafted explanatory journalism like this.”
Thanks to our Sponsors
More Awards
Arnold Ventures provides support for InquireFirst programs
It’s our pleasure to report that Arnold Ventures is providing support for our 2025 programs for Latin American journalists.
In partnership with Arnold Ventures, we’re looking forward to providing professional development and reporting grants for numerous journalists in Mexico, Central America and South America over the course of this year.
In awarding the grant, Arnold Ventures cited InquireFirst for its persistence in finding ways to collaborate with Latin American journalists and support their work as they report on important issues ranging from climate change to immigration.
InquireFirst, founded nine years ago in San Diego, California, has grown to a prize-winning organization that has reached hundreds of Latin American journalists with Spanish-language training programs, fully-funded reporting trips, and reporting grants to support nuanced, in-depth multimedia projects. Our nonprofit organization places a special emphasis on working with early-career journalists and supporting cross-border investigative reporting on climate and the environment.
Arnold Ventures is a Houston-based philanthropy founded in 2008 by Laura and John Arnold that is dedicated to improving the lives of all Americans through evidence-based policy solutions that maximize opportunity and minimize injustice. The foundation provides grants to more than 60 communications organizations to increase reporting capacity primarily in three areas: investigative journalism, covering policy in state capitals, and single subject websites that dovetail with the foundation’s research interests.
Logan Foundation supports InquireFirst programs for Latin American journalists
We’re proud to announce that the Reva & David Logan Foundation is providing support for our 2024-2025 programs for Latin American journalists.
The Logan Foundation said its aim is “to help advance InquireFirst’s role in maintaining a robust journalism ecosystem in Latin America through programs that promote cross-border investigations and help advance the careers and skills of early-career journalists.”
With the support of the Logan Foundation, we’ve had an extraordinary year highlighted by wide-ranging reporting programs for Latin American journalists and recognition from three international journalism awards.
By the close of 2024, InquireFirst will have brought 55 Latin American journalists from 10 countries, including Cuba, to the U.S.-Mexico border for week-long reporting trips. These trips, which provide unprecedented access to U.S. officials and NGOs, offer Latin American journalists the opportunity to conduct nuanced reporting on the complex policy issues and the human drama of immigration.
Journalists who have participated in the five trips organized by InquireFirst this year have traveled to El Paso, Tucson, San Diego, the Rio Grande Valley and New York City.
At the same time, InquireFirst has been awarded three international journalism awards for projects on climate change and the environment that we have brought from idea to reporting and writing to publication with grants and editorial support for Latin American journalists.
In additional, a team of four early-career journalists in Quito was awarded Honorable Mention for Reporting in Digital Media by the National Journalists’ Union of Ecuador in February 2024 for their compassionate, science-based project titled ‘In the bubble: how to survive Down Syndrome in Ecuador,’ which they reported and wrote during our seven-week Voces Emergentes Ecuador program.
The Reva & David Logan Foundation is a Chicago-based family foundation that provides strategic grants to support social justice, the arts, and investigative journalism in Chicago and around the world.
Golden Globe Foundation supports En Común for fifth season of programming
We’re delighted to announce that InquireFirst has received funding from the Golden Globe Foundation for a fifth season of En Común: conocimiento en voz viva, our radio program on science, health and environment tailored for rural and Indigenous communities in Mexico.
The Golden Globe Foundation is providing funding that makes it possible for En Común to broadcast 20 weekly, science-based reports in 2025 on health and environmental issues that affect the Indigenous communities that form a mosaic of diverse ethnic identities, ancestral knowledge and cultural values in Mexico.
The radio program shares the voices of Indigenous people as our reporters – many of them Indigenous journalists working for the first time with an international media organization – record the concerns and the experiences of people in their communities.
En Común co-founder and executive producer Iván Carrillo and InquireFirst Executive Director Lynne Walker have formed alliances with regional and national radio networks in Mexico that allow us to reach community radio stations stretching from Chiapas to Baja California.
Thanks to our Sponsor
SYMPOSIUMS
World Conference of Science Journalists
MEDELLIN, Colombia — When we organize a workshop at InquireFirst, we put journalists to work!
That’s exactly what happened during our day-long March 27 workshop at the World Conference of Science Journalists in Medellin. Almost 40 journalists from 14 countries joined us for our Historias Sin Fronteras workshop, which focused on strengthening science, health and environmental journalism through cross-border reporting.
MERIDA, Mexico – “There’s no more important work than the work being done by journalists,” said Brian O’Donnell, director of Campaign for Nature, during a February 2020 environmental investigative journalism workshop organized by InquireFirst.
As the world witnesses a “massive acceleration in extinction” of species, coverage of
MEDELLIN, Colombia – InquireFirst Executive Director Lynne Walker met with journalists in Medellín and Cali, Colombia, July 29-August 3 to discuss new techniques for conducting investigative reporting.
During the programs organized by the Public Affairs Section of the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá, Walker led interactive sessions with journalists who cover
LAUSANNE, Switzerland – We’re pleased to announce that InquireFirst has awarded our first reporting grants to a team of Latin American science writers to support their work on a cross-border regional health story.
The reporters on the team were selected during our Jack F. Ealy Science Journalism Workshop, which was
MEXICO CITY – “Writing is music…language can be used in so many creative ways,” Deborah Blum, director of the Knight Science Journalism Program at MIT, told almost 30 science and health journalists attending our regional workshop in Mexico City.
As Blum lead journalists through an interactive workshop on narrative science
FULLERTON, Calif. – Top U.S. journalists joined InquireFirst as speakers at our “Transparency and Investigative Reporting” workshop Feb. 25-March 1, when Latin American journalists traveled to Southern California to attend sessions on fact-checking, in-depth investigative reporting, cyber security and reporting with drones.
Among our speakers were:
Ginger Thompson, senior reporter
GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador -- S. Lynne Walker, President and Executive Director of InquireFirst, traveled to Guayaquil and Quito, Ecuador, in January 2019 to instruct a series of interactive workshops titled “Investigative Journalism in High-Risk Situations.”
In Guayaquil, journalists from newspapers, television networks and online news sites participated in a nine-hour interactive
PALO ALTO, Calif. – Latin American science journalists were presented with a host of new professional development opportunities during the Jack F. Ealy Science Journalism Workshop at Stanford University.
The June 17-21, 2018 workshop, organized by InquireFirst and Mexico City-based Fundación Ealy Ortiz, focused on training opportunities – with Latin
SAN JOSE, Costa Rica – Science and health journalism should not be limited by international borders. Complex new health threats such as Zika virus that occur in a “noisy” media environment require a new model of reporting, Andrew Revkin, strategic adviser on science and environmental journalism for The National Geographic
MEXICO CITY – Prominent Mexican journalist Carmen Aristegui said the internet presents “a great light and a great shadow ” for journalism in an era of fake news
On the opening day of a journalism TechCamp in Mexico City, Aristegui acknowledged “there is serious questioning” of the
