Tracey Eaton

Tracey Eaton is an award-winning journalist and visual storyteller. He has worked throughout Latin America and is a former Fulbright scholar in Ecuador. He headed Dallas Morning News bureaus in Mexico and Cuba from 1994 to 2005. He investigated corruption and organized crime in Mexico and along the U.S.-Mexico border and covered the fighting in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks.

His stories have appeared in hundreds of online media outlets and more than 100 U.S., Canadian, and Latin American newspapers.

Eaton has produced and sold videos to NBC News and other media outlets. One of his videos lit up the facades of UNESCO’s Paris headquarters. Another drew 34 million views on YouTube. His freelance journalism clients have included NBC News, USA Today, Tampa Bay Times, Newsweek, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, and the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting. He has also written stories for Insider, a digital media brand with an audience of more than 148 million.

In 2010, Eaton created the Cuba Money Project, which tracked U.S. tax dollars spent in Cuba before it was discontinued in 2022. He has written more than 3,000 blog posts and articles about Cuba since 2008, with dozens of pieces translated into Spanish, Portuguese, and other languages and reproduced in publications around the world. The New York Times, Reuters, the Associated Press, the Atlantic, Columbia Journalism Review, Politico, the Miami Herald, and others have cited his work.

Numerous books have cited Eaton’s research, including Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations Between Washington and Havana; U.S. Foreign Policy Since the Cold War; Cuba: A Global Studies Handbook, and others. Scholarly publications have also mentioned his work. Titles include “Ladies in White: A Peaceful March Against Repression in Cuba and Online” and “Internet, Public Space and Contention in Cuba.”

In August 2015, Eaton assisted NBC’s Nightly News, led by Lester Holt, with its coverage of the opening of the U.S. embassy in Havana. In March 2016, he traveled to Cuba again to help with NBC’s coverage of President Barack Obama’s historic visit to the island.

Eaton is an associate professor and served as chair of the Communication Department from August 2018 through June 2021.

Awards

Green Eyeshade Awards

First place, political reporting, for investigation of waste and abuse
in federal government programs aimed at assisting Cuban immigrants, 2016.

Investigative Reporters & Editors

Finalist for the Tom Renner Award, which recognizes outstanding watchdog
reporting, for an investigation into Cuban organized crime, 2016.

Florida Society of Newspaper Editors

Second place, investigative reporting, for investigation of waste and
abuse in federal government programs aimed at assisting Cuban
immigrants, 2016. 
First place, Feature Writing, for a story about Cuban spy Juan Pablo
Roque, 2013.