The Case for Unbordered Reporting
A guide for taking immigration stories beyond walls both physical and mental.
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Early in my career as a journalist, I had dinner with a source who would be assassinated less than two years later. Francisco Piedragil Ayala, president of the state coffee council in Guerrero, Mexico, spoke in slow, deliberate Spanish, his snow-white hair tied back.
"I think—no, I know—that you and the young people like you are the light at the end of the darkness we are in," he said, a gleam in his eye. "The way you are going to illuminate it is by learning. By getting to know."
We were at a restaurant in Acapulco, where my editor had asked me not to stay out late because he was worried about cartel violence. But I was riveted by Piedragil. As the ocean blackened beside us, I took notes and asked questions.
Author's summary: Exploring the importance of unbordered reporting in journalism.