InquireFirst brought 24 journalists from across the country to attend our May 12 workshop. The journalists, who work in print, radio, television and online newsrooms, traveled from Guayaquil, Manta, Portoviejo, Duran, Tulcan and Lago Agrio to Ecuador’s capital for the workshop.  Many said they had been threatened because of the investigations they have conducted.  Some said their families are also at risk.

“We are journalists and we are also victims,” one journalist said.

The Ecuadorian government’s war on drug trafficking has turned the country into one of the most violent in Latin America, setting a record of 54 murders per 100,000 inhabitants in 2025, according to official data.

Six Ecuadorian journalists were murdered in the past year, said Artur Romeu, Latin America Director for Reporters Without Borders (RSF).  “This is extremely serious ,” he said, confronting  “Ecuador with one of the most dire situations on the continent.” The conditions in Ecuador now rival Mexico, where “historically, more journalists are murdered and the violence is more severe.”

The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) has warned that Ecuador is among eight countries in Latin America facing the most severe restrictions on freedom of expression and the press. In 2026, Ecuador dropped 31 places in the World Press Freedom Index, falling from 94th to 125th out of 180 countries evaluated by RSF.

During the InquireFirst workshop led by Mexican safety expert Javier Garza, journalists outlined their concerns about the dangers they face. The forces working against independent journalism in Ecuador “are much more organized that we are,” said one journalist.

The journalists said they need effective tools to safeguard communications with sensitive sources.  They also need protocols for protecting themselves while covering stories where organized crime figures are present, such as law enforcement operations, court hearings, and areas of the country where there is a history of violent crime.

Journalists said that they have been advised by their sources to avoid contacting law enforcement if they face a safety issue.

“In the event of an emergency, who should we turn to?” one journalist asked. “There is an ongoing campaign to delegitimize journalists. As a result, during high-risk assignments, we are often followed, photographed by the very officials we seek to interview, or met with hostility in remote areas far from major cities.”

As a last resort, the journalists sought protocols in case they have to flee the country. “I find it extremely valuable to address the question of who to turn to when exposed to threats from organized crime,” a journalist said.

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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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Kris Banvard joined the InquireFirst Board of Directors after embarking on two different careers – twenty-five years in newspaper journalism and then twenty-three years in the practice of law.

Born in Los Angeles, Kris spent the first part of his childhood in Southern California in a variety of locales ranging from a multi-ethnic neighborhood in central L.A. to suburban Long Beach.  When he was 10, his family moved to Shasta County in the far northern part of the state, where they lived on a lake and Kris rode a bus five miles each way to attend a school that had a total of 50 students in grades 1-8.  One constant throughout his early years and to this day has been his interest in history, political economy, geography, world events – and journalism.

After earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Oregon in 1978, Kris worked as a reporter and city desk editor for newspapers in Oregon, California, Virginia, and, lastly, in Ohio, where he has resided for the past three decades.  During the 1980s when he was with The Sacramento Union in California, he came to know S. Lynne Walker, who was also a reporter at the paper and who went on years later to co-found and lead Inquire First.

Kris’ final stop in the newspaper world was at The Columbus Dispatch, where his last stint was as an editorial writer.  While with The Dispatch, he attended law school at night, graduated third in his class, and was admitted to the Ohio Bar.  Kris then switched careers and joined a litigation firm in Columbus that, among other things, represented The Dispatch and related media properties in business and media-law matters and public records litigation.

Having recently retired from law practice, Kris resides in a Columbus suburb with his wife.  Their two grown daughters and three grandchildren live nearby.

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Nora Livesay was the Director of Finance at the nonprofit Institute of the Americas on the University of California, San Diego, campus from May 1998 until her retirement in March 2022. A native of Tennessee, she graduated Magna Cum Laude from Radford University in Radford, Virginia, with a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration with an emphasis on accounting.

Since retiring, Nora has kept busy traveling, mainly visiting National Parks. Her hobbies include hiking, Yoga, reading and spending time with family and friends.

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Nancy Wyld, a founding member of InquireFirst, spent 17 years at The San Diego Union-Tribune where she was operations manager for the 400-person newsroom and handled budgets, contract negotiations and vendor relations. She also oversaw newsroom technology and was facilities manager for the Union-Tribune’s news bureaus. Prior to arriving in San Diego, she was production manager for a newspaper group on the East Coast.

After leaving the Union-Tribune, she spent seven years as a member of FEMA’s National Disaster Recovery Coordination cadre reporting on field operations and long-term recovery efforts.

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Iván Carrillo is a journalist, documentary maker and producer specializing in science, the environment and the oceans, with over twenty years of experience across the Ibero-American media landscape. He has published and produced work for media outlets such as National Geographic, Knowable Magazine, CNN en Español, Discovery Channel, History Channel, Expansión, NCC Iberoamericano, and El Universal, among many others.

He is the co-founder of Historias Sin Fronteras and has directed documentary series including El futuro del planeta, 1.5 grados para salvar al planeta, La ciencia del fútbol andLa ciencia a prueba.

Carrillo is also the co-founder of the radio program En Común: conocimiento en voz viva, and serves as editor and host of the pioneering program that connects Indigenous journalists with scientists to deliver useful, evidence-based knowledge to rural communities in Mexico.

His work has received international recognition, including the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Award for Excellence in Science Communication 2025, awarded by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM)—one of the most prestigious honors in the field of science communication. He has also received the Covering Climate Now Award, the TED Countdown Journalism Fellowship, grants from the Pulitzer Center, the National Geographic Society, Earth Journalism Network, and the Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at MIT.

He is currently developing transnational projects focused on marine conservation, climate change and solution-driven narratives.

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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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