The 2010 Lovejoy Award for Courage in Journalism was awarded to Alfredo Corchado, Mexico bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News. He works the most dangerous beat in the Western Hemisphere — the US-Mexico border.
Despite death threats he has persevered, chronicling government and police corruption, the disappearance of hundreds of young women, shootouts and executions, and the migration of narcoterrorism into U.S. cities. Corchado accepted an honorary doctorate and the 2010 Lovejoy Award for courageous journalism.
Colby College in Waterville annually selects one Lovejoy Award recipient from newspaper profession. The award was established in 1952 in honor of America's first martyr to freedom of the press, Elijah Parish Lovejoy. He was born November 9, 1802, in Albion, Maine, and graduated from Waterville College (now Colby) in 1826. On Nov. 7, 1837, in Alton, Ill., Lovejoy, a newspaper editor, became America's first martyr to the freedom of the press when a pro-slavery mob set fire to the building that housed his press. Killed as he attempted to extinguish the blaze, he was buried on November 9, his 35th birthday.
This talk was recorded on September 26, 2010 at Colby College in Waterville in Lorimer Chapel as a part of the Goldfarb Center Lecture Series.