Rodrigo Pérez Ortega, On the Rewards of Reporting Between Two Worlds “Editors were hungry for these stories from the Global South,” said the biomedical researcher-turned-science journalist, who has found a niche filling that gap.

Eleven years ago, Rodrigo Pérez Ortega and his friend Emiliano Rodríguez Mega won fellowships from the National Association of Science Writers — NASW, for short — to report on a big annual science meeting in the U.S., becoming the first Mexicans to receive that honor.

The meeting, held in California and hosted by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, or AAAS, also marked Pérez Ortega’s debut as a science journalist. He wrote a piece about neuroscientist Karl Deisseroth’s research on optogenetics, a technique that uses light to control neuronal activity. (Pérez Ortega had studied neurobiology while majoring in biomedical research at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.)

He has been working as a journalist ever since, covering everything from paleontology to medicine, science policy, and academia.

With one foot in Mexico City, where he lives, and the other in the U.S., where he currently works as a staff writer for Washington, D.C.-based Science Magazine, Pérez Ortega describes himself as a bridge builder. It’s a position, he says, that requires an awareness of how science works in different contexts, and an understanding of the dynamics that shape relationships between wealthier countries, which have historically dominated scientific production, and countries in the Global South.

Pérez Ortega is currently a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT, where he is working on a project about ethical issues in specimen-based research, including scientific colonialism. He recently spoke with me at the Knight Science Journalism Program offices. As his dog Kira dozed off in the corner, he told me about his path from research to journalism, his views on geographic diversity in science journalism, and the rewards and challenges of working between two worlds.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Laura Martín Agudelo: What drove you to science journalism?

Rodrigo Pérez Ortega: I think it was a process. [When I was in research], we were doing this very narrow, expensive stuff in the lab that rarely reaches the average public, and I thought: Why? I was fascinated by all these experiments, by learning about science, and [journalism] was just a way to make the public as excited as I was about it.

Another thing was: How do you relate? I mean, that is what journalists do every day. How do we relate all this science to your everyday life, right? One of the first neuroscience stories I wrote was about the power of narrative and storytelling in the mind, how it can change your neurochemistry and behavior.

LMA: You have been a science journalist for 11 years now, writing from Mexico for outlets in English and Spanish. What do you value the most about being “between two worlds”?

RPO: I think the community aspect of it. In the U.S., I found this very welcoming community of science writers at the AAAS meetings and the NASW. Then I was a fellow at The Open Notebook, and I was like: Why is this not happening in Mexico?

Well, in Mexico, in 2016, there were very few of us, less than thirty science journalists. We were all scattered, we were not collaborating. So we founded the Mexican Network of Science Journalists. And 10 years on, it has grown to more than one hundred journalists.

I think I’ve been a bridge in that regard. There were many other people before me, but I think that was the first major step to form a community. I’m also trying to mentor people, encourage them to pitch outlets in the U.S., help them out, as a lot of people have helped me out.

I hope I’ve been successful at building bridges, trying to blur the line between science journalism in the U.S. and Latin America, also encouraging a new generation of science journalists to write in English or even write in Spanish but have those connections in the English-speaking world.

LMA: Beyond writing in two languages, being a bilingual journalist is also having access to different contexts in which science is made, and even to the North-South dynamics in academia. How does that affect your coverage?

RPO: When I was in academia, I saw all these injustices. At the time, I didn’t really put a name on it. Like, why is Mexican science — or overall, the Global South — so slow to catch up? And then you realize: Oh, you get government funding in pesos, but you have to buy all this stuff from the U.S. in dollars, and [there are] all these hurdles to basically get the same things done.

Then I found through journalism you have the power of making people accountable, that perhaps as a student in an institution you don’t. You can write about it, point the finger and say: Hey, this is going on… basically, stuff that we all know about, that perhaps a lot of Global North journalists don’t.

And that’s the power of journalism. I think, as a science journalist, you’re not covering “the science,” like this big thing. You’re covering scientists, humans, and they all come with their passions, their features, their life stories. And that plays a role. And, of course, that plays a role in telling the stories of both worlds. The life stories of scientists in Latin America are very different than the ones in North America or Europe or elsewhere, right?

LMA: And why is it important to shed a light on those differences? How is your position as a bilingual journalist important in that way?

RPO: Well, I think it’s important because there’s great research being done in many places in the Global South, but it’s sometimes overlooked for many reasons.

Two major reasons are just language barriers and the lack of interest. Science journalism has been dominated by the Global North, and journalists tend to cover the science that happens around them. It’s changing now, and it’s great, but [it has been historically] very US- and Europe-centric.

Ten years ago, when I was starting, if there was a paper where the corresponding authors were based in the Global South but there were one or two authors from the U.S., the reporters here would call that author because of, you know, the language.

Then I found out that editors were hungry for these stories from the Global South, but they just didn’t have the people [to cover it], right? So I found the niche there, fortunately it has been growing, so now there’s more people doing it.

At my job at Science Magazine, I try to showcase more of the science issues, both good and bad, coming out of Latin America that [have an] impact. You know, it’s world-class science.

There are amazing science journalists covering science in Mexico. But I am in a privileged position as a staff writer at Science, where I can showcase that science to the world on an international stage. I like to write for an international audience, especially for the Global South. I think there’s a lot of things that connect us. If I write about Latin America, I’m writing for the people in Latin America, for the audience here in the U.S., but also for someone in Malaysia, someone in India, who will understand what’s going on and can relate to that.

I hope I’ve been successful at building bridges, trying to blur the line between science journalism in the U.S. and Latin America.

LMA: Are there any drawbacks to being in this type of “in-between” situations?

RPO: It can be tiring. Writing about science, I not only have to be aware of the politics in the U.S. and the world, but also in Mexico and Latin America. That helps me understand how one affects the other, especially now with the tariffs and stuff like that, and it also helps me understand collaborations.

But it’s a very privileged position. I love it.

LMA: What message would you give to aspiring science journalists who have a background like yours?

RPO: I think I’ve been fortunate that a lot of the opportunities in the U.S. that have been historically meant for U.S. journalists have opened — or perhaps they were always open, but people like me weren’t getting them. It’s a real privilege to be here. And it helps, it opens new ways for other people from Latin America and elsewhere to get where I am today, and I’m happy to help them, or pave a way, at least.

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Laura Martín Agudelo is a student in MIT’s Graduate Program in Science Writing. Before coming to MIT, she was a health journalist in France for 5 years, covering medicine and public health.