NAHJ Congratulates Member on Winning Cabot Prize

The National Association of Hispanic Journalists extends its congratulations to NAHJ member Alfredo Corchado on winning the 2007 Maria Moors Cabot Prize for outstanding reporting on Latin America and the Caribbean. Corchado is Mexico bureau chief for The Dallas Morning News.

“The recognition helps elevate border coverage and the dangers that journalists face to the mainstream level. It's a tribute to the many victims, whether drug trafficking, or murdered women of Juarez, who have entrusted me into giving them a voice,” Corchado said.

The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism administers the Maria Moors Cabot prizes, the oldest international journalism awards. The honors go to journalists who have covered the Western Hemisphere and, through their reporting and editorial work, have furthered inter-American understanding. Each year, winners are announced in July and are honored at a ceremony held in New York in the fall. The awards consist of a Cabot medal and a $5,000 honorarium. Other winners of the 2007 prize are Gary Marx, foreign correspondent, Chicago Tribune; Maria Teresa Ronderos, editorial advisor, Semana Magazine (Colombia); and José Vales, Latin American correspondent, El Universal (Mexico).

“Alfredo is so deserving of this honor,” said Iván Román, NAHJ executive director. “It’s important that we recognize those journalists who do their jobs in the face of danger.”

Just last week, a threat was made against an unnamed American reporter working on the Texas-Mexico border, prompting news organizations to either take extra precautions or pull their reporters from that area.

“Corchado … covers a deadly beat that scares off most other journalists – drug-related crime and violence along the U.S. – Mexico border, now considered one of the world’s most dangerous places to practice journalism,” university officials said in a statement announcing this year’s Cabot Prize winners.

It continued: “Corchado has refused to back down, instead continuing to produce exclusive stories about drug dealers, police and government corruption, the epidemic disappearance of women, and the spread of organized crime among Mexican drug cartels into Dallas and Houston.”

A native of Durango, Mexico, Corchado has covered Latin America for nearly his entire career. In 1985, as a reporting intern for the Ogden [Utah] Standard Examiner, Corchado wrote a seven-part series on Latin American migrant workers that won a first-place award from NAHJ. In 1997, Corchado and two colleagues won a Katie Award for specialty reporting from the Press Club of Dallas for a series on democracy in Mexico. The same year, he won a first-place award from the Texas Associated Press Managing Editors for a feature series called “U.S.-Mexico: The Disappearing Border.”

Corchado was the lead reporter for the Morning News’ coverage of the 2000 presidential election in Mexico. He was the first journalist to interview Vicente Fox following his historic win. He has also written extensively on Cuba and was part of an effort that resulted in The Morning News becoming one of the few U.S. news organizations to operate a bureau there during the Castro era.