Big Bend Sentinel has partnered with the Puente News Collaborative based out of El Paso to expand coverage of the border with news and features on immigration, the environment and Mexico—with the Puente News providing content to publish in the Sentinel, and the Sentinel also providing stories for the collaborative’s partners to publish.
Puente News grew out of the El Paso Community Foundation and kicked into high gear with the hiring of Alfredo Corchado, a 30-year reporter for The Dallas Morning News who served as a bureau chief in Mexico and covered much of Latin America. Corchado accepted a buyout of his position in 2024 and started looking for an interesting project. “I felt really guilty when I took the buyout, because I thought [The Dallas Morning News] was the only Texas newspaper still standing, covering the border, covering Mexico,” he said.
The foundation, however, told Corchado there were opportunities for grant money and that Puente needed his leadership. “They said, ‘We need a new vision. We need an injection of new blood.’”
“When Puente started, it was more of an El Paso/Juarez effort initiative, but I wanted to see if we could cover the entire border,” Corchado said. “El Paso, since it’s halfway around the border, jokingly I thought it could be the capital of the entire border. The whole idea behind Puente is to try to help news deserts. And I thought, okay, we can send freelancers, hire freelancers to go cover these sections. But then, as I started traveling more and more, I saw just how enormous that desert is.”
Corchado then knew they needed money, both for its stable of reporters and to try and support publications along the border lacking the resources to expand coverage or even to survive.
“These publications are fighting hard, but obviously they need some funding,” Corchado said. “And I’m coming from the idea that anything helps—whether it’s court reporting, photography, more reporters, traveling out of town, whatever. So we started with a grant from Levi Sprouse, and we use that money for grants. Big Bend Sentinel was one of the recipients.”
Corchado started with local publications for partners—El Paso Times, El Paso, Inc., KVIA and the University of Texas at El Paso. “We started with four, and then we slowly started growing,” he said. “We’re up to about 15 partners throughout the United States, and they range from the San Antonio Express News, to Big Band Sentinel. Then we also have El País and The Guardian.”
Puente News has been issue oriented, but Corchado is looking forward to working more in investigative pieces, particularly with Mexican news partners. “I’ve always been big on data-driven investigative pieces,” he said. “We have a couple of reporters, freelancers who are really good at that,” he said. “We’re going to start setting the agenda for that in 2026.”
Corchado also enjoys the role of building up beginning journalists and mentoring them. “I feel like there are so many talented reporters out there that all they need is an opportunity,” he said. “So by providing them some money, some freelance money, or a grant here or there, it really makes the job much more meaningful, that you’re actually really fighting for your profession, for your industry, and your community.
“I think it’s very clear that the border is very often the source of the polarization, the division in this country,” Corchado said. “I come from this belief instilled in me from my first editor at the Wall Street Journal, 30-something years ago, where he said, ‘Narratives, when they’re done right, stories, when they’re done right, they can heal divisions.’”
You can read all the Puente News stories published in the Sentinel at bigbendsentinel.com/puentenews.
