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piqer for: piqd Boom and bust Climate and Environment Global finds Globalization and politics Health and Sanity Technology and society Doing Good Deep Dives
Malia Politzer is the executive editor of piqd.com, and an award-winning long-form journalist based out of Spain. She specializes in reporting on migration, international development, human rights issues and investigative reporting.
Originally from California, she's lived in China, Spain, Mexico and India, and reported from various countries in Africa, Europe and the Middle East. Her primary beats relate to immigration, economics and international development. She has published articles in Huffington Post Highline, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Vogue India, Mint, Far Eastern Economic Review, Foreign Policy, Reason Magazine, and the Phoenix New Times. She is also a regular contributor to Devex.
Her Huffington Post Highline series, "The 21st Century Gold Rush" won awards from the National Association of Magazine Editors, Overseas Press Club, and American Society of Newspaper Editors. She's also won multiple awards for feature writing in India and the United States.
Her reporting has been supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, The Institute For Current World Affairs, and the Global Migration Grant.
Degrees include a BA from Hampshire College and MS from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where was a Stabile Fellow at the Center for Investigative Journalism.
How A US Drug Operation Spurred A Massacre In Mexico: A Beautiful, Tragic Online Exposé
In this tragic online exposé, ProPublica journalist Ginger Thompson (in partnership with National Geographic) meticulously interviews the survivors of a massacre by the Zeta cartel against the residents of a Mexican town called Allende, just a 40 minute drive from Eagle Pass, Texas. Unlike most cartel massacres, the Allende killings didn't originate in Mexico, but the US. The Zetas struck the town in retaliation to a US Drug Enforcement Agency investigation that resulted in the revelation of key members of the Cartel - and ultimately, the deaths of thousands of people.
In this unique multimedia spread, the reported narrative of the massacre is accompanied by recorded interviews with the survivors, and haunted images of the devastated remnants of the buildings destroyed in the attack.
Unlike most reported pieces that rely on brief quotes, the multimedia presentation intentionally gives the survivors the space to tell their stories: for example, Rodriguez, identified only as "victim's wife", who recalls:
"Saturday is when everything began. Houses began exploding. People began breaking in and looting, and all I could think about was where Everardo might be. All day Saturday I spent searching and calling people to ask, ‘What have you heard?’ One person told me, ‘I saw armed men.’ Another told me, ‘The warehouses are still on fire. The smoke is really black, as if someone’s burning tires. It’s black, scary smoke’."
In addition to the actual event, the reporter delves into the investigation that prompted it, the leak and the aftermath - all accompanied by the same vivid images and first-person recollections, resulting in a beautiful, moving and tragic narrative of an event that should never have taken place.
