The power and promise of science journalism in Latin America
In this last issue of 2019—thank you, donors, volunteers, and friends!— we present another personal perspective from a distinguished CASW board member. Debbie Ponchner, now a freelance science journalist in Costa Rica, founded and edited the science section of Costa Rica's La Nación and served as the Spanish-language editor of Scientific American.—Ros Reid
When I traveled last July to Lausanne, Switzerland, to attend the 11th World Conference of Science Journalists, I wasn’t expecting to leave with a reporting assignment, but I did.
During a pre-conference workshop sponsored by the Mexico-based Fundación Ealy Ortiz, Latin American journalists were invited to form small teams and draft pitches for an international reporting project. The winning team would get a small grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to carry out the work.
Our team won the grant, and for the next three months, four science journalists—Valeria Román in Argentina, Margaret López in Venezuela, Carmina de la Luz Rodríguez in Mexico, and myself in Costa Rica—explored the world of transgendered people in our countries. If you are transgender in Latin America, you can expect to live only about half as long as your cisgender peers. We wanted to understand: Why?
With the guidance of our editor, Iván Carrillo, “Transgender in Latin America: Unfolded from Otherness” was published in November by the online science publication Tangible and the Mexican newspaper El Universal. (The package was originally published in Spanish.)
In addition to learning about the struggles and injustices transgender people face during my reporting, the project allowed me for the first time to work with colleagues across borders, learn from them, and come to realize that there is a huge potential in the region to carry out ambitious journalism projects about science and health. We have the people, and we have the stories.
We lack resources, training opportunities, and news outlets in the region interested in publishing stories about science. And yet the room in Lausanne full of Latin American science journalists, their energy and their ideas, makes me believe that the future for science journalism in the region is promising. Organizations including HHMI, CASW, and InquireFirst—the three U.S.-based nonprofits that helped realize this small project—see this promise as well. I am proud to be part of a pioneering team, and I am confident that more groundbreaking cross-border science journalism will follow.
Debbie
 Debbie Ponchner
Board Member
Council for the Advancement of Science Writing
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