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,"
"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.