Voces Emergentes Ecuador team wins 2024 national journalism award

Voces Emergentes Ecuador team wins 2024 national journalism award

A compassionate, data-driven project by a team of early-career Ecuadorian journalists who participated in our Voces Emergentes Ecuador program was awarded Honorable Mention for Reporting in Digital Media by the National Journalists’ Union of Ecuador in February 2024.

Gabriela Coba, an Quito-based 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 the bubble: how to survive Down Syndrome in Ecuador, in just six weeks during Voces Emergentes Ecuador.

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.

This prestigious recognition of Voces Emergentes is the latest honor bestowed on work produced by Latin American journalists who are supported by InquireFirst grants.

Historias Sin Fronteras project wins gold medal in state journalism award

Historias Sin Fronteras project wins gold medal in state journalism award

At the U.S.-Mexico border our Historias Sin Fronteras cross-border paleontology project titled Unearthed: The peaceful past of “the most violent city in the world” was awarded a gold medal (First Place) in the Reporting category of the José Vasconcelos Prize for Journalists in the state of Chihuahua.

The project by Ciudad Juárez journalist Gustavo Cabullo Madrid and photojournalist Juan Antonio Castillo in collaboration with El Paso journalist Aracely Lazcano, was recognized in October 2023 with the top reporting award for compelling, science-based storytelling that took readers to a period in time when the northern Mexican desert was a placid sea rich with biodiversity.

The narrative artfully wove together the present and the past through the voices of police detectives who, in their search for the human remains of victims of violent crimes, often find the vestiges of a geological past.

On receiving the award, Aracely Lazcano told our Historias Sin Fronteras team, “I am super happy and honored to have collaborated on this project with all of you. I appreciate the invitation, the patience, and above all the opportunity to learn and continue growing. Not even in my wildest dreams did I think that something like this could happen!!!”

Mexican journalist Enrique Cordero wins Premios TAL international award for Special Report on immigration

Mexican journalist Enrique Cordero wins Premios TAL international award for Special Report on immigration

From Zacatecas journalist Enrique Cordero, who participated in an immigration reporting trip that InquireFirst organized in April to the Texas-Mexico border.

Enrique produced a six-part, long-form television report titled Frontera for his media organization, Sistema Zacatecano de Radio y Televisión (Sizart). 

In December 2023, his series won an international award from Premios TAL in the category of Special Reports. TAL (Televisión América Latina) is a network of public, cultural and educational television stations in Latin America. 

Enrique wrote, “This a new beginning for me.”

We received more good news in December – this time from Geneva, Switzerland!

Our Montañas y Selva: Voices from the Andes and the Amazon project on the impact of 50 years of oil exploration in the Peruvian Amazon is a finalist for Excellence in Environmental Journalism in the international Fetisov Journalism Awards.

Historias Sin Fronteras project a finalist in National Journalism Award

Historias Sin Fronteras project a finalist in National Journalism Award

In another first for InquireFirst, our Historias Sin Fronteras project on fluoride pollution in Mexico and Argentina titled The axis of fluoride: corporate pollution which we published in December 2022 was chosen as a finalist in Mexico’s National Journalism Award in the Science Journalism category.

We are honored by the recognition of the outstanding reporting and writing by journalists Alejandro Saldívar in Mexico and Daniel Wizenberg in Argentina.

Their reporting garnered international attention and was published by several prominent media organizations, including the weekly news magazine Proceso in Mexico and Earth Island Journal in the United States.

The project was edited by Historias Sin Fronteras co-founder Iván Carrillo, a Mexico-based science editor and journalist.

InquireFirst, in partnership with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education (HHMI), launched Historias Sin Fronteras at the 2019 World Conference of Science Journalists in Lausanne, Switzerland.  Since awarding the first grant at that year’s conference, Historias Sin Fronteras has published 13 cross-border projects.

In addition to publishing on our own website, 52 media organizations from Canada to Argentina have published one or more of our Historias Sin Fronteras projects.

Zacatecas immigration journalist nominated for international award

organized by InquireFirst to the Texas-Mexico border, has been nominated for an international award by Premios TAL in the category of Special Reports. TAL (Televisión América Latina) is a network of public, cultural and educational television stations in Latin America. 

Enrique produced a six-part television report titled Frontera for his media organization, Sistema Zacatecano de Radio y Televisión (Sizart). 

Voces Emergentes México team wins state journalism prize

Voces Emergentes México team wins state journalism prize

A team of four journalists in Baja California Sur (BCS) was awarded Honorable Mention in the 2022 state journalism awards for their project revealing that mining operations in BCS that are going forward with the support of the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources despite repeated claims by Mexican President López Obrador that no more mining concessions would be awarded during his administration.

The journalists – Diego Soto, Karina Lizárraga, Adriana Márquez and Mahatma Fong – researched and wrote the investigative report as part of InquireFirst’s Voces Emergentes México program for early-career journalists and university journalism students.

Voces Emergentes Mexico, a six-week program held in June-July 2021, offered intensive training to almost 40 journalists and students from Mexico City and from eight Mexican states stretching from Baja California to Yucatán. In the short period of six weeks, the journalists and students produced 12 newsworthy projects that were published by 16 news organizations on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.

The project by the BCS team was published by Forbes Mexico, Riodoce, El Sur de Guerrero, La-Lista, and the weekly news magazine Proceso.

“During 2021 the days became longer, because we were part of the first generation of a diploma course for journalists in the areas of in-depth or investigative reporting,” Lizárraga said on the day of the awards ceremony. “I thank and congratulate my colleagues for the hard work that is recognized today in our state.”

Soto said “this was the first time that I worked with a team on a news story and it was a pleasant and satisfying experience.”

“Journalism has no borders!” he said.

Voces Emergentes México was the first of a region-wide intensive training program organized by InquireFirst for early-career journalists and university journalism students. A key focus of the program is collaborative journalism.

During the six-week program, experienced editors guided and advised the young journalists as they researched in-depth news stories and produced multimedia elements such as videos, photo slide shows, audio reports, infographics and interactive maps and timelines.

The second program in the Voces Emergentes series was held in Paraguay in April-May 2022. A new Voces Emergentes program is planned in another Latin American country next year.

Historias Sin Fronteras project is shortlisted for award for Outstanding Investigative Reporting

Historias Sin Fronteras project is shortlisted for award for Outstanding Investigative Reporting

We are thrilled to announce that “Transgender in Latin America,” a cross-border science journalism project reported and written by Latin American science writers Valeria Román, Debbie Ponchner, Margaret López and Carmina de la Luz Ramírez has been shortlisted by the Fetisov Journalism Awards for Outstanding Investigative Reporting.

“Transgender in Latin America” was our first cross-border science journalism project under our Historias Sin Fronteras initiative, which we launched in July 2019 to provide grants to Latin American journalists for cross-border science, health and environmental projects.

H/T to Mexico-based science journalist and editor Ivan Carrillo, who edited the project and who is the co-founder of Historias Sin Fronteras.

Read the project on our website historiassinfronteras.com and join us in congratulating the team.

A special thanks to the Department of Science Education at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute which supports Historias Sin Fronteras and believes in the power of science journalism when we work together across international borders.

InquireFirst intern awarded CASW data reporting grant

InquireFirst intern awarded CASW data reporting grant

Jennifer-Lu

WASHINGTON, D.C. — InquireFirst intern Jennifer Lu has been awarded a $5,000 special reporting grant by the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing (CASW) Taylor/Blakeslee Project Fellowship Program to report on the urgent problems created by the nation’s aging drinking water infrastructure.

Lu is completing her final semester of the University of Missouri master’s program in journalism, where she is focusing on investigative and data journalism. Her professional goal is to apply these skills to stories about science, health and the environment.

In awarding Lu the fellowship, the judges noted the urgency and importance of investigative science reporting on the drinking water contamination crises now facing many cities. They congratulated Lu on a reporting plan that will dig into these issues and examine the effectiveness of practice and regulation at the local, regional and national levels.

Lu is one of five graduate students currently supported by Taylor-Blakeslee University Fellowships. The Brinson Foundation, which underwrites the fellowships, provided the follow-up grant to enable a Fellow to undertake a career-launching enterprise project.

Fellows approaching graduation were invited to propose high-impact enterprise projects that would leverage their graduate training and entrepreneurial talent. “The submitted projects were all excellent, and we hope these exceptional science journalists will find ways to complete them. The world needs this reporting,” said CASW Executive Director Rosalind Reid.

Lu holds a master’s degree in biochemistry from Brandeis University and worked as a research technician in Boston-area medical labs before refocusing on science journalism.

This is the second year of the project fellowship. The first grant went to Amy McDermott, then enrolled in the Science Communication Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

InquireFirst journalist awarded Alicia Patterson Fellowship

InquireFirst journalist awarded Alicia Patterson Fellowship

WASHINGTON, D.C. — InquireFirst reporter Elizabeth Douglass has been awarded a $40,000 Alicia Patterson fellowship to support her reporting on the nation’s deteriorating drinking water infrastructure. She has also received a $9,000 grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism to help cover the expenses of her work, including travel and public records requests.

Nearly 80 journalists working in more than a half-dozen countries applied for Alicia Patterson fellowships. They are awarded twice a year to support reporters who need financial assistance to pursue stories that provide an in-depth look at important business or economic issues. The six winners were chosen following interviews and a review of detailed proposals, work samples and references.

The fellowship program was established in 1965 in memory of Alicia Patterson, who was editor and publisher of Newsday for nearly 23 years before her death in 1963. Fellows are awarded $40,000 for a 12-month grant or $20,000 for a six-month grant. The one-year grant that Liz received honors Josephine Patterson Albright, a former Newsday columnist, sister of Alicia Patterson and a major benefactor of the foundation.

The Fund for Investigative Journalism was founded in 1969 to encourage independent in-depth reporting on local, national and international affairs. In December the fund awarded $72,350 in grants to 14 reporters or reporting teams working on stories that will expose significant ills in society, government malfeasance and cover-ups, and abuses of people whose voices are rarely heard.

Douglass had earlier received a $12,000 McGraw Fellowship, an initiative of the Harold W. McGraw, Jr. Center for Business Journalism at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. The fellowships were created in 2014 to support ambitious coverage of critical issues related to the U.S. economy and business.

The three grants will help fund Douglass’ reporting on InquireFirst’s inaugural project, an in-depth examination of the nation’s neglected water infrastructure and water quality protections, with an emphasis on issues beyond those highlighted by the Flint, Mich., water disaster. Her first story will be released in January.

Douglass has been a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times, InsideClimateNews and The San Diego Union-Tribune, where one of her projects was a finalist for the prestigious Gerald Loeb Award. She has appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show, Public Radio International and Chicago public radio, as well as in a PBS documentary about turmoil in the defense industry.

Elizabeth Douglass’s reporting on the nation’s deteriorating water
infrastructure isfunded in part by

Sam Quinones wins National Book Critics Circle Nonfiction Award for “Dreamland: The True Story of America’s Opiate Epidemic”

Sam Quinones wins National Book Critics Circle Nonfiction Award for “Dreamland:
The True Story of America’s Opiate Epidemic”

NEW YORK – Sam Quinones, a California-based journalist with deep reporting experience in Mexico, was awarded the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) Award for Nonfiction during a March 17 ceremony at the New School in New York.

Quinones’s book, “Dreamland: The True Story of America’s Opiate Epidemic,” was described by NBCC judges as “masterful and sobering. ‘Dreamland’ is like a classic tragedy in which what we fervently wanted, an absence of pain, turned out in many cases more damaging than anyone could have imagined.”

The judges said, “Dreamland is a devastating dive into what may be America’s most extensive drug crisis. Quinones masterfully weaves together individual tales from all quarters of the epidemic. It all came together in what Quinones calls a catastrophic synergy in which over prescription formed a generation of addicts.”

In accepting the award, Quinones said his research “took me all over this country” before he finally set his story in “a Rust Belt town that had been beaten down…the town of Portsmouth, Ohio.”

Portsmouth has been devastated by addiction, as have hundreds of small rural towns and suburbs across America. But it is in Portsmouth that Quinones said he found hope.

“They are finding the wherewithal to build community,” he said. In other cities and towns across America, however, Quinones said he found “a story of isolation over community.”

Quinones, a contributing journalist with InquireFirst, credited his experience as a crime reporter in Stockton, Ca., with shaping him as a writer.

“That’s where I learned how to tell crime stories, how to cover murder, cover gangs, cover drug trafficking, and write my ass off for four years of the most withering crime rates anyone has ever experienced,” he said.

Quinones also spent 10 years reporting in Mexico, an experience he describes as “life changing.” Mexico was “where I could focus on characters, where I could focus on a changing country.”

Quinones, who lives in Los Angeles, is the author of two earlier books: “Antonio’s Gun and Delfino’s Dream” and “True Tales from Another Mexico.”