A Conversation On Trauma-Informed Immigration Reporting

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Join PEN America, the Chicago Headline Club, and 90 Days, 90 Voices for a conversation on how journalists can ethically shape stories when covering immigrant communities.

Chicago journalists Sebastián Hidalgo, Maria Ines Zamudio, and Melissa Sanchez will share firsthand experiences and insights on trauma-informed reporting, as well as discuss how journalists can support one another in the field and in the newsroom.

An updated version of 90 Days, 90 Voices ethical guide to immigration coverage will be available for attendees.

Photo by Chris Froeter

Sebastián Hidalgo is an award-winning photojournalist and digital producer who uses photography to engage and explore many social and humanitarian issues affecting communities of color. He is also an educator and co-host of The Visual Desk, a bi-weekly editorial support group for concerned and engaged freelance visual journalists. In late 2018, local photojournalist Sebastián Hidalgo took on a Washington Post assignment to document the story of Isaac Flores, an 11-year-old from Honduras who was separated from his mother at the border in January 2018. Disturbed by other national media’s emphasis on the wall, Hidalgo chose to focus on Flores’ day to day life as a child to rehumanize the conversation on immigration. He believes in the power of growing in conjunction with the people who are in front of the camera, as a witness, a bridge and, in some cases, as a collaborator.

Maria Ines Zamudio covers immigration for WBEZ. She is an award-winning investigative reporter who is now part of the race, class and communities team. Prior to joining WBEZ, she worked for American Public Media’s investigative team. She’s also worked as an investigative reporter for the Memphis Commercial Appeal and Chicago Reporter magazine. In 2015, Zamudio and a team of reporters from NPR’s Latino USA received a Peabody National Award for their coverage of Central American migrants. Zamudio’s story was reported from the Mexico-Guatemala border and it focused on the danger women from Central American while traveling through Mexico as they try to reach the United States. Her work has appeared in The Associated Press, New York Times, National Public Radio, NBC 5 Chicago, Telemundo, Univision among others.

Melissa Sanchez is a reporter at ProPublica Illinois. She has lived in Chicago since 2014, writing primarily about education for the nonprofit magazine Catalyst Chicago and later its sister publication, The Chicago Reporter. Her stories there looked at the extraordinary costs of allowing private investors to finance public preschool programs, access to higher education for undocumented students and lax enforcement of city and state labor laws, among other issues. Before coming to Chicago, she reported en español for El Nuevo Herald, the Miami Herald’s Spanish-language sister paper, on everything from rampant absentee ballot fraud and abusive police towing practices to a deadly prison fire in Honduras. And before that, she wrote about immigrants and gangs for the Yakima (Washington) Herald-Republic, and reported from Nicaragua through a fellowship from the Inter American Press Association.