ABSTRACT
The writer, a Miami-based Colombian-American environmental reporter, tells the story of her coverage of Antarctica. Through the years she has linked “climate change, the Antarctic continent, Hispanics in the US, Hispanics in Mexico, Central and South America, and their connection back to Antarctica. … An ambitious narrative arc with environmental, geographic, scientific, geopolitical, historic, and social undertones.” She says, “It was the story of a thousand stories. … I doubt any journalist has squeezed their Antarctica for a living the way I have squeezed mine – and continue to do so. Every time the smallest piece of news about the frozen land emerged, I went on full-attack mode to find angles and threads to accommodate what I had learned on The Ice with whatever was happening in it.” If freelancing is the future of environmental journalism, this writer is the model freelancer. “At some point … it became obvious that selling articles like ornamented muffins was not going to pay the mortgage,” she writes. She began to realize that she could make money by giving inspirational talks to interested groups. “Surviving as a science and environment journalist these days is like attacking climate change: one has to use all weapons and go at it from all angles.”
