In 2023, a chance encounter gave Argentine science journalist Martín De Ambrosio an opportunity to report for a new-to-him international outlet. A freelancer for more than 10 years, De Ambrosio was attending the World Conference of Science Journalists in Medellín, Colombia. During a session on Latin American COVID-19 vaccines, he found himself chatting with an editor from the British Medical Journal.
The editor admitted that he had struggled to follow the Spanish-speaking panel. But he thought its subject warranted a story, and he invited De Ambrosio to write it. “I told him, ‘I write well in Spanish, but in English I need an editor who can keep a close eye on the text,’” De Ambrosio recalls.
The result was a feature about efforts by Argentina, Cuba, and Brazil to develop their own vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic, touching on broader global issues of scientific independence and security. For De Ambrosio, who now writes for multiple international outlets, including Nature and SciDev.Net, it was a chance to showcase valuable research from the region. Coverage of the Global South often flattens it into a stereotype by focusing on poverty and conflict, he says. But there’s a growing amount of active research in the region. “Not everything is about negativity or ‘those poor, underdeveloped countries’ and how badly they’re doing,” he says.
In fact, scientific output from the Global South is rising. Between 2012 and 2022, the number of publications by authors from Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa grew at average annual rates of 26 percent, 17 percent, and 7.8 percent, respectively, according to an Elsevier report. Local reporting remains essential for highlighting the importance and value of this work in the countries where it is produced. Yet much of this research remains invisible beyond national borders due to limited funding, language barriers, and publication in lesser-known journals.
For science journalists working in the southern hemisphere, this represents an opportunity—even a responsibility—to bring this knowledge to a larger audience via international outlets. That exchange has value in both directions. By connecting local stories with global themes and sharing perspectives and knowledge about local contexts and sources, journalists in the Global South can elevate locally produced science to an international audience and inform broader conversations about science. And for journalists working outside the traditional centers of scientific power, being based elsewhere can be one of their greatest professional strengths.
“If you’re in a more remote or a less frequently covered place, but there’s a lot of interesting stories and science to be told there, you can kind of own that place. It becomes your beat,” says Tom Zeller Jr., editor in chief of Undark, a magazine exploring the intersection of science and society.
Reporting from the Inside
Local reporters are the best equipped to tell stories from the countries where they’re based. They may share the language of the researchers they’re covering, understand the political and cultural context of the research, or know where important scientific work is happening beyond the world’s best-known institutions. These strengths are difficult to replicate from afar and are in demand among editors seeking international coverage.
“You have a better sense, in your own country, of who the experts are who understand these topics best—who have a more independent, serious, and rigorous perspective,” says Alexa Vélez, managing editor at the international environmental publication Mongabay Latam. “But if I am looking from the outside and reading the media, I may end up interviewing the wrong person.”
Pay attention to international events, trends, and conversations and find cases or studies that offer local angles on these topics.
Journalists from the Global South can also recognize and avoid biases about the region that others may miss. When Disha Shetty, a freelance journalist from India, began serving as a judge for the Covering Climate Now awards last year, she noticed that some stories written by non-local journalists portrayed communities through a paternalistic lens. When she brought this up during deliberations, other judges took it into account. “‘We had not thought about this until you pointed it out,’” she recalls them saying.
Over time, journalists who consistently report from rarely covered regions can become trusted contacts for editors across multiple publications, says Zeller. Such connections can help journalists turn vital local work into a source of economic stability. International publications often pay higher rates than local outlets, says Kenyan freelance science and health journalist Scovian Lillian. Especially in countries where staff positions in science journalism remain scarce, writing for international outlets can become an important income stream.
Connecting Local Stories to Global Themes
Successful international pitching requires finding stories that will resonate beyond your borders. One way to achieve that is by paying attention to international events, trends, and conversations and finding cases or studies that offer local angles on these topics. Noting widespread debates about public investment in research and the growing global political backlash against science, De Ambrosio pitched stories from Argentina to help readers understand the potential on-the-ground consequences of divestment. In December 2024, he reported for Nature on how President Javier Milei’s deep budget cuts pushed scientists to leave Argentina and threatened the country’s research system. One year later, he examined for the British Medical Journal how cuts to health, education, and science affected Argentina’s public health system. “Argentina became a kind of testing ground for what would later happen in the United States,” says De Ambrosio.
A complementary approach is to start with an interesting local story and seek out related international developments. When India announced it would expand HPV vaccinations to teenage girls, for example, Shetty reached out to The Vaccine Alliance, Gavi, to find out whether other countries were planning similar campaigns. Learning that several were, she reported on this broader trend for Devex, a news organization covering global development. “You have to find and connect the themes,” she says, even if that sometimes means patiently sitting on a local idea until an international connection emerges.
Reach out to editors and use your proven track record of clips to show that you have the local expertise, sources, and access to tell a specific story.
Finding cross-border connections is another way to place local stories within broader trends or patterns and help faraway readers understand the bigger-picture implications of localized events. While reporting a story about the presence of mercury in the waters of the Amazon basin, Vélez and her team revealed that 249 Indigenous and riverside communities in Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil have been exposed to this contamination. The September 2026 story described the health effects of this heavy metal—used for illegal gold mining—in three emblematic Amazonian rivers, making its international relevance clear. “Environmental problems don’t belong to just one country, because ecosystems don’t end at political borders,” Vélez says.
Similarly, in April 2026, Laasya Shekhar, managing editor at the Asian American–run news outlet The Xylom, published a story on how coal mining projects in central India threatened Indigenous communities’ farmland and access to forests they depended on for food and income. She then found a similar case in Australia, where Indigenous communities had spent years protesting the development of the Carmichael coal mine. “I analyzed it and drew similarities between both cases with the help of expert voices,” Shekhar says.
To find these local stories, you may need to cast your net wider than familiar academic publications. Many locally relevant studies from the Global South are published in journals that receive little international visibility—and some are not published in journals at all. Shetty describes her own process as “patchwork.” Some of her story ideas come from relationships she has built with local researchers over time. She meets them at science conferences and workshops, follows their work on LinkedIn and X, subscribes to research alerts from organizations such as the World Health Organization, and keeps a growing archive of contacts and even old public relations pitches that may later become useful in a completely different story.
Looking beyond high-profile scientific journals, however, increases the chances of pulling ideas from predatory or low-quality publications. If you’re working from a study, verify that it has gone through peer review and corroborate its findings by digging up other relevant research, which can also strengthen your story. At Undark, editors may also examine the methodology of pitched studies and consider how they fit within the broader body of evidence before commissioning a story, especially for unfamiliar work or a new writer. Scientific rigor is examined again during fact-checking, Zeller says. “Our fact-checkers are very smart about scientific studies and what’s a quality study and what’s not.”
Establishing International Connections
Placing local stories like these in international media requires overcoming the challenge of breaking into a market where no one knows you or your work. In some cases, it may be hard even to identify the right person to pitch. In that context, submission forms and pitching editors directly via email can work. But efforts to introduce yourself to editors and establish trust up front can help overcome geographic distance and potential differences in language, culture, and political and economic contexts.
Asking colleagues to introduce or recommend you to editors with whom they already work is one way to initiate contact. Another is to reach out to editors and use your proven track record of clips to show that you have the local expertise, sources, and access to tell a specific story. When Brazilian freelance journalist Rodrigo de Oliveira Andrade wanted to start writing for Nature, he pulled contact information for the appropriate editor from the publication’s “About us” webpage. He then sent an email introducing himself, describing his experience reporting in Brazil, and asking whether he could submit story ideas. The exchange led to a phone call that marked the beginning of a collaboration reporting on Brazilian science, including reproducibility research, science funding, and the impact of public policy on research. “Those conversations are very important for understanding what editors are most interested in,” de Oliveira Andrade says.
Along the same lines, Zeller says a phone or video call is often part of how he evaluates whether a freelance journalist is someone he can trust to do good work. The conversation helps him understand the reporter’s familiarity with the subject and the scientific sources, the depth of their local knowledge, and whether they are open to shaping a story collaboratively with editors. If a reporter repeatedly avoids speaking live or insists on communicating only by email, “I start to not trust what’s happening,” he says, noting that concerns about AI-generated pitches have made transparency even more important.
When possible, meeting face-to-face at a conference or other networking event, as De Ambrosio did at the 2023 World Conference of Science Journalists, is one powerful way to build a bridge—or strengthen one that already exists. Lillian recommends attending international conferences whenever possible. “[In 2025,] I went to the World Conference of Science Journalists in South Africa and met some of the editors that I had been working with,” she says. After meeting, “even the way they respond to your emails is different.”
Xilena Pinedo is a Peruvian science journalist covering health, environmental issues, and climate change in Latin America. Her reporting focuses on environmental justice and the relationship between scientific research, public policy, and Indigenous knowledge. Follow her on X and Instagram.
