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Alfredo Corchado
ajcorchado@aol.com

Alfredo Corchado, Mexico bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News, covers a deadly beat that colleagues say 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. 

In this savage climate, Corchado has refused to back down. He keeps producing stories about drug dealers, police and government corruption, the epidemic disappearance of women, and the spread of organized crime among Mexican drug cartels into U.S. cities, including Dallas and Houston. He has exposed The Zetas, former Mexican military commandos now working as a private army for drug lords, described mass shootouts that no one else writes about, obtained and described videos of revenge executions, and revealed how the few arrested for the mass murder of women in Juarez are often innocent stooges.

In 2007, Columbia University awarded Alfredo Corchado the Maria Moors Cabot Prize for “extraordinary bravery and enterprise.”


Mr. Corchado was born in Durango, Mexico, and, along with his mother and brothers, migrated legally to the United States at the age of six. He calls the border home.


He is a 1987 graduate of the University of Texas at El Paso and El Paso Community College. Aside from The Dallas Morning News, Corchado has also worked for The Ogden Standard-Examiner, The El Paso Herald-Post and The Wall Street Journal.

He is currently a 2009 Nieman Fellow.

 

Contributions

A reporter describes how drug violence has taken a heavy toll on journalism in Mexico
COMMENTARY | April 99, 2009
Writes Alfredo Corchado: "Media members self-censor themselves to survive. Many reporters, especially along the U.S.-Mexico border, are now limited to reporting on body counts. Investigations are rare. Even reporters in Mexico City now withhold bylines on ‘sensitive stories' for fear of reprisal from members of organized crime."


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