Congratulations to Mexican journalists Juan Pablo Narcia and Gabriel Martínez who have been awarded Mexico’s top journalism prize for their reporting during an immigration program organized by InquireFirst in November 2025.

Juan Pablo, who reports on the Senate and binational diplomacy for the N+ (Televisa/Univision) television network, and Gabriel, director of production at N+, were awarded the Premio Nacional de Periodismo en México (National Journalism Award in Mexico) for their reporting from Texas and Arizona on border enforcement and human rights issues.

The team of reporters participated in an intensive week-long InquireFirst program that took them to Presidio, Texas, and Tucson, Arizona.  In receiving the award during a March 20, 2026, ceremony in Mexico City, their coverage of “Operación Espejo” – a joint U.S.-Mexico operation to deter illegal border crossings – was singled out for praise by the judges.

Juan Pablo credited the participation in our InquireFirst program with giving the team access to high-level sources and locations on the Southwest border where they could conduct their award-winning reporting.

“The coordination and help you provided were key for making the coverage possible,” Juan Pablo said.  “It really made a difference for this work.”

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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 in its annual journalism awards.

The SEJ Awards are the world’s largest and most comprehensive environmental journalism competition. During the 2024 competition, judges and subject-matter experts, including journalists and professors, read, listened to 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.”

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In July 2024, Covering Climate Now recognized our Historias Sin Fronteras multimedia project as a winner in the Food & Agriculture category of its annual climate journalism awards.

Covering Climate Now received 1,250 entries from journalists in dozens of countries.  We are honored and thrilled that our 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.”

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Mr. Alvarado and videographer Edgardo Marín, who both attended our July 2024 program, aired at least eight reports for live news broadcasts while they were traveling with our group in Texas.  Once they returned to Panama, they produced a 6-minute special report and Mr. Alvarado was interviewed during a special news program, spending 11 minutes on air discussing what he witnessed and reported during the trip on the U.S. Southwest Border.

In May 2025, the Fórum de Periodistas de Panamá awarded Mr. Alvarado the Premio Nacional de Periodismo for Best News Coverage for his series of reports titled Migración en la frontera sur de EEUU, la crisis en primera fila.

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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.”

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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.

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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!!!”

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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.

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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.

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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.

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