Sharing Ideas
by Leslie Mazoch
Staff Photographer
Brownsville Herald

Not many women my age in Brownsville, TX are free to meet for a beer after work. They're married and or have children to care for.  I often catch myself calculating how old I would have been to have a child the age of their children, and I usually land back in my teens.

In a quick trip to the Chamber of Commerce, I learned Texas is ranked 3rd highest in the nation for teen pregnancy. Locally, in the Rio Grande Valley, more than 38.5 per 1000 teens become pregnant every year. (That's the highest possible ranking on the chart). WHY young people here are likely to be parents by the time they hit their twenties, making it more difficult for them to finish high school, go on to college, and earn more than minimum wage salaries, led me to my latest project: teen pregnancy.

I began interviewing teen mothers and fathers, and their words were no surprise: they wish they hadn't gotten pregnant so young - they aren't comfortable talking about sex with their parents - sex is not a topic in science or health class - and they learned to use protection AFTER their pregnancy. I thought that if the local newspaper addressed the connection between inadequate sex education and high pregnancy rates, this might help 
bring the subject out of the dark and facilitate conversation about sex between parents and teens, as well as highlight a need for sex education in the school curriculum.

It took me a month to get the courage to share this project with my paper. In my written and oral presentation to my Editor, I stressed it must be a team effort between me and the writer, not an idea that I present and the writer reinvents.  If this project turned into a shallow, misogynistic report on who was responsible for teen pregnancy, I would have wished I never brought it up.

But, I was pleasantly surprised by the people I work with.  The news editor had the hindsight to assign a thoughtful, young, female writer to the story.   We both related first hand to the teens who were making decisions about sex while their parents pretended they were still virgins.  Also, the editor who oversaw the project respected the level of involvement I expected to have. I admit I had to be proactive, encouraging the writer to use the contact numbers I gave her, to consider the interviews I'd already done, and to include the teens who I had photographs of. They understood that I had a stake in this project, and I wasn't going to let it go.

I will always move with caution in sharing my story ideas with writers and editors, but this project's success in team work leaves me with a sweet taste in my mouth.  I have found a writer and news editor who understand that I want to work with them as a photojournalist, not for them as a camera person.

Leslie Mazoch
Staff Photographer
Brownsville (TX)
Mazoch@hotmail.com