INTERNATIONAL JOURNALISM: REPORTING ON LATIN AMERICA
The School of Journalism, Department of Near Eastern Studies, Center for Middle Eastern Studies and Center for Latin American Studies have for several years collaborated on a program that enables students to combine regional and language skills with opportunities to do research, reporting, and digital-imaging work in other countries.
Since 2004, award-winning journalist and best-selling author Alan Weisman has taught Reporting on Latin America, in which students spend the first half of a semester studying a region, then travel to that country to report on it.
In Spring 2004, the first class traveled to Chile. In Spring 2005, another group reported on people and events in Panama, and a 2006 group reported from Mexico. Those three series of articles and photos were picked up by the Tucson Citizen, a Gannett newspaper and Tucson's former afternoon daily. (The newspaper ceased print publication in spring 2009.) In 2007, students covered stories in Puerto Rico for Wick Newspapers, principally the Green Valley News and in 2008 students traveled to Argentina to report for the Arizona Daily Star. The 2009 group reported from Mexico City.
Weisman is the author of The World Without Us, a bestseller translated
into 30 languages that was named the best nonfiction book of 2007 by both Time magazine
and Entertainment Weekly. Weisman's reports from around the world have appeared in
The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, the Los Angeles Times Magazine and
Harper's. He is a senior producer for Homelands Productiona, whose work airs on National
Public Radio, Public Radio International and American Public Media.