Thursday night at Las Almas Rotas (“The Broken Souls”) in Dallas’ Fair Park area, a bunch of current and former Dallas Morning News journalists gathered to celebrate one of those amazing periodistas.
Alfredo “Freddy” Corchado, a remarkable reporter and brilliant storyteller, has covered immigration and U.S.-Mexico issues for The News since 1993. He will soon join a number of other incredibly talented veterans who are leaving the DMN, marking more sad goodbyes for a first-rate publication with a proud, distinguished history that, like others across the industry, has struggled to find solid financial footing and consistent subscriber momentum during an era when shrinking numbers of people will pay to read a newspaper – even digitally.
During three-plus decades with The News, Freddy has blanketed the border with coverage more thoroughly than any U.S. journalist, covering drug trafficking and cartels, corruption among Mexican police and government officials, the mass murder of women in Ciudad Juárez and so much more, putting his life on the line in doing so. He was the DMN’s Mexico City Bureau chief for years and also wrote a number of stories out of Cuba after the paper became one of the first in the U.S. to open a bureau there. In the early 2000s, Freddy also spent several years in The News’ D.C. bureau.
In more recent years, he has written deeply human stories about immigrants and the massacre of Latinos at an El Paso Wal-Mart in 2019. Freddy has his own captivating life story, and the fact that he’s spent a career telling the gripping stories of so many others – both heart-wrenchingly sad and uplifting – and giving voice to the voiceless is no surprise.
As a longtime copy editor at The News before leaving for a new job a little over a year ago, I loved when I had the chance to edit Alfredo’s stories. Because of his ability to get people to talk to him, to gain access to officials and to build compelling stories – with the help of the assigning editors who worked so closely with him, including Dave Hiott, Tim Connolly, Keith Campbell and others – Freddy’s copy was always a fantastic read and didn’t require much fine-tuning by the time it reached the copy desk.
Thursday’s shindig featured generations of Dallas Morning News faces ranging in age from 20s to 70s, including the man who brought Freddy to the paper, former editor Bob Mong, now president of the University of North Texas at Dallas. Keith, the longtime DMN’er who now lives with wife Sara outside Asheville, North Carolina, even flew in to help fete Freddy – and the Campbells will be traveling to California in about a week to meet and spend time with their new grandson, whose mom is the Campbells’ daughter Emily.
Just because Freddy’s leaving the newspaper business, that doesn’t mean he’s finished writing – thank goodness. He’s authored two books and is working on a third.
It’s been an honor, sir. Even though we won’t be reading you in The Dallas Morning News anymore, we know it’ll be a long time before you put aside your craft. Be sure to take some time to enjoy life with Angela. ¡Buena suerte y sigue contando historias! 
A Life of Words 