Your reporting team
for the Mérida Summit

Meet Our 26 Scholarship Winners

Authentic Journalism's Next Generation

By Al Giordano

December 2, 2002

Dear Colleagues,

Start the drumroll…

The envelope please…

These are our first-round draft picks for the 2003 class, who we affectionately nickname…

The Authentic 26

The Seven Full Scholarship Recipients:

—Alex Contreras, investigative reporting and broadcasting from Cochabamba
—Blanca Eekhout, reporting and broadcasting from Caracas
—Elizabeth Flores, reporting and studying from Mexico City
—Carola Mittrany, reporting and producing from Rio de Janeiro
—Ava Salazar, reporting and photographing from Chiapas to Albuquerque
—Adam Saytanides, reporting and graduating from Chicago’s Medill School
—Pablo Ramón, reporting, producing, and webmastering, from Washington DC… San Francisco… Venezuela… Colombia… well… from somewhere in a country called América!

The 18 Partial Scholarship Recipients:

—Sunny Angulo, reporting, broadcasting, and agitating from San Francisco
—Andrea Arenas, reporting and producing from La Paz
—Alex Bardales, reporting and blogging from Aliso Viejo
—Ana Cernov, reporting and studying from Sao Paulo
—Andrea Daugirdas, reporting and teaching from Manhattan and the Bronx
—Laura del Castillo Matamoros, reporting irrepressibly from Bogotá
—Ashley Kennedy, reporting that kicks butt from New Orleans
—Helena Klang, reporting and producing from Rio de Janeiro
—Noah Friedman-Rudovsky, reporting and photographing from deep in the Silver Mines of Bolivia and Brooklyn
—Reed Lindsay, reporting from ALL the barrios of Buenos Aires
—Dan Malakoff, reporting and researching from Washington DC
—Patrick “Murph” McMahon, reporting and blogging from Aliso Viejo
—Vivian Mannheimer, reporting and broadcasting from Rio de Janeiro
—Karine Muller, reporting and producing from Rio de Janeiro
—Ricardo Sala, reporting, webmastering, and organizing, from Mexico City
—George Sanchez, investigative reporting and playing guitar from San Francisco
—Andrew Stelzer, reporting and broadcasting from Portland, Oregon
—Ugo Vallauri, authoring and webmastering from Bologna, Italy
—Adriana “Dri” Veloso, reporting, broadcasting, webmastering, teaching, and, in general, mega-IMC’ing from Belo Horizonte

Should they choose to accept this mission, this renaissance will not self-destruct…

Or, in the immortal credo of Salón Chingón, they’ve been cordially invited…

To attend the Narco News School of Authentic Journalism offered by…

Mario Menéndez Rodríguez—Gary Webb—Renán Castro Madera—Annie Harrison—John Gilmore—Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar—Jeremy Bigwood—Gustavo de Greiff—Maria Botey Pascual—Jules Siegel—Peter Gorman—Lisandro Coronado Alcocer—Gonzálo Subirats García—Maximilien Arvelaiz—Juan Ramírez—Valerie Vande Panne—Anthony Lappe – Stephen Marshall – Luis Gómez—Dan Feder – Al Giordano – don Andrés Vásquez de Santiago…

And newly announced faculty members…

Kim Alphandary – Francisco Álvarez Quiñones – Richard Cowan – Thierry Deronne – Stan Gotlieb – Charlie Hardy – Ken Layne – Kaia Porter – Diana Ricci – Libby Spencer…

And invited faculty members…

Cynthia Cotts – Barry Crimmins – Tom Lesser – Ethan Nadelmann

And some yet-to-be-announced guest lecturers…

The Authentic 25 are all, we repeat, cordially invited to attend all courses…

for free…

…because they’ve paid enough already!

February 10th to 20th, 2003, on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula

These 25 Authentic Journalists, together with our faculty and staff, will also offer multi-lingual and multi-media Full Coverage through Narco News and other media of the first-ever all América drug legalization summit, February 12th to 15th , 2003, in Mérida, Yucatán. (If you come… You will be heard.)

http://www.stopthedrugwar.org/shadows

En Español:

http://www.stopthedrugwar.org/sombras

In the coming weeks and months, kind reader, you’ll be meeting and hearing from The Authentic 25 and a large supporting cast. You’ll also meet some additional faculty members. They’re going to work hard for you. Please offer them your full attention, collaboration, and support.

From somewhere in a country called América,

Al Giordano
Publisher
The Narco News Bulletin
http://www.narconews.com/
narconews@hotmail.com

Lea Ud. el Artículo en Español

For more Narco News, click here.