Isabella Rosario
Writer / Editor / Fact-Checker
Most recently, I was an associate editor at Outside Magazine, where I edited health and culture stories and managed our fact-checking process. Previously, I was a public safety reporter at the Ames Tribune, part of the USA TODAY Network. From January to June 2020, I interned at NPR Code Switch, Apple Podcasts’ first-ever Podcast of the Year. My writing has also appeared in The Daily Iowan, Little Village Magazine, Greatist, Healthline, and ZORA Magazine by Medium.
I also write a Substack called Your Best Midwestern Girl. Check it out here.
Email: rosarioisabellac at gmail dot com (for personal inquiries only—I do not accept pitches at this address)
Editing
Outside Magazine
With Young People Drinking Less, Mountain Sports Culture Is Changing—Maybe for the Better by Miyo McGinn
Mountain sports are saturated with alcohol. Summit beers, lift beers, après ski, post-ride happy hours, whiskey around the campfire—some days it feels like you could drink from beginning to end of your favorite outdoor activity. But as public health officials issue warnings over alcohol and younger Americans report that they drink less than previous generations, it’s worth asking whether our outdoor adventures should include so much booze.
A Chronic Illness Upended My Life. Could I Still Run a Marathon? by Molly Monk
When we were training, my friends slowed down to be with me. We talked through our heartbreaks, anxieties, and more on our long runs together. When we stopped to walk, we showed each other that needing a break—needing help—doesn’t have to mean getting left behind. My nervous system still sucks, but that simple solidarity healed something deeper in me. Running a marathon didn’t take away the grief that came with my POTS diagnosis. But it gave me a way to practice letting others help me through hard things, and I found liberation in that practice. And now at my own pace, with my friends beside me, I’m running headlong into joy.
It’s True, You Only Need a Couple of Workouts a Week by Michael Venutolo-Mantovani
You should do something that makes you sweat every single day, right?
At least, that very loose metric has long been the standard for anyone who wants to stay fit, live longer and healthier, and stave off any number of diseases that are associated with inactivity … However, according to a new study published in Circulation, a journal from the American Heart Association, it might be perfectly fine to cram a week’s worth of exercise into one or two days. In fact, the study says that doing as much—becoming a “weekend warrior,” so to speak—can lower the risk of developing more than two-hundred diseases when compared to wholly inactive people.
Yes, You Need to Stretch. But Not Like You Were Taught in Gym Class. by Alyssa Ages (Moves column)
Touching your toes. The standing quad hold. The overhead tricep stretch. These are the static positions our high school gym teachers taught us to warm up with before engaging in any physical activity. But to adequately prime your body for movement—whether you’re biking to work or trekking up a mountain—you have to actually get moving.
Help! My Wealthy Friends Keep Inviting Me on Trips I Can’t Afford. by Blair Braverman (Tough Love column)
Money is precise, of course, but in a group of friends, it’s also relative. We measure our finances against our peers, but we don’t actually know how much money they have, so instead we measure against what we think they have, though that estimate may be wildly different from the truth. Add that to issues of shifting employment, debt, and family responsibility, and it’s no wonder that talking about money can be awkward with even the closest friends.
Writing
Outside Magazine
No, Your Whole Body Doesn’t Need Deodorant—Especially in the Backcountry
I couldn’t tell you where I was when I first saw Secret’s whole-body deodorant commercial, but I can tell you it has followed me everywhere since—from Instagram to YouTube to my household’s patchwork of streaming services. “Wanna know a secret? More than just my armpits stink,” a woman deadpans straight into the camera. Then, a chorus of women cheerfully extolls the benefits of “spraying, swiping, or smoothing” the peach and vanilla-scented deodorant “everywhere—and they really do mean everywhere.” One woman puts it on in her bathroom, while another applies it in a locker room. Yet another uses it in her office, kicking her bare feet up on the desk in front of her and spritzing them. The last woman—clad in a flannel shirt, khaki shorts, and hiking boots—rubs the product on her legs while sitting on a tree stump in the woods.
Hog Poop from Iowa Is Polluting Your Water
To mark the unofficial start of summer over Memorial Day weekend, my partner and I went hiking at Geode State Park near our home in rural southeast Iowa. As we walked around the lake, we came across two towheaded boys no older than ten. “My brother keeps losing his lure,” the older one told us, shaking his head, as the younger boy waded knee-deep into the water. On the grass behind them lay an open fishing tackle box, as well as two iPhones—those necessary evils for today’s unsupervised children—that appeared to have been mindlessly tossed aside. For anyone worried about kids wasting their lives in front of screens, this would be a heartening sight. But as we made our way around the lake, we noticed patches of toxic blue-green algae blooming on the water’s surface.
What’s Up with President Obama Narrating a Netflix Nature Series?
The series’ most politically charged moments arrive at the end, when Obama urges us to “demand” to protect public lands, to “campaign” for more, to “push” for better in our own communities. But he doesn’t name-check anyone in power for us to demand anything from. His most concrete proposal? “Vote like the planet depends on it.” To be sure, there’s no disputing that a meaningful fight against climate change requires all of us. But the message rings hollow coming from the former occupant of the most powerful office in the world—even if that former officeholder did enact progressive climate policy. If Obama has a political message in Our Great National Parks, it’s to affirm American mythology about personal responsibility, the altruism of conservation, and our so-called “best idea.”
Inside the Gambler 500, an Off-Road Rally for Picking Up Trash
A monster truck fashioned from a hearse. A Geo Metro made of two front ends welded together. A red SUV with a fire-breathing dragon’s head fused to the hood. If you saw these DIY vehicles tearing through the high desert of central Oregon, “you could mistake it for a scene from a Mad Max movie,” says Brian Kaiser, a 43-year-old photographer from Ohio. But the Gambler 500, which Kaiser attended along with some 2,000 others last June in Redmond, just north of Bend, isn’t a postapocalyptic cinemascape. First staged in 2014 by a ragtag group who explored the woods in cheap cars, the annual off-road rally doubles as a massive trash cleanup. For three days, drivers in imaginatively revamped rigs clear large pieces of garbage—mattresses and couches, abandoned boats and rusted camper vans—from hundreds of acres of public land, which they then transport to designated landfills.
Ames Tribune
On a cold and rainy afternoon in October 1995, more than 1,000 people gathered outside the building previously called Old Botany for the dedication ceremony of Carrie Chapman Catt Hall. “I am very proud to have Carrie Chapman Catt as part of Iowa State’s history,” then university president Martin Jischke said of the 1880 graduate. “This building is a symbol of Iowa State’s commitment to equality.” It had been 75 years since the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which barred states from denying voting rights based on gender. A skilled political strategist, Catt propelled the movement to victory by making inroads in the hostile South, where white politicians were wary of the suffragists’ historical connection with abolitionists.
Will more hate crime laws help #StopAsianHate? Not all Asian Iowans agree
[Benjamin] Jung said when it comes to how Asian Americans in Iowa feel about hate crime laws, “it depends on who you speak to.”
[Nu] Huynh said opinions “run the gamut.”
“We have community members that are saying we want nothing to do with law enforcement … (and we also have) groups and organizations under the Iowa Asian Alliance that are delivering food to thank first responders,” Nuynh said.
Here’s what happens when school resource officers charge Ames students
Earlier this year, a 12-year-old girl was upset in the Ames Middle School principal’s office. Staff asked the school resource officer and another principal “to assist due to her aggression,” according to an incident summary from the Ames Police Department. After allegedly kicking and biting the principals, the student was handcuffed by the officer, whom she also allegedly bit. Then, police put the girl in a patrol car and took her to the police department. The incident is one example of how, when Ames police are involved in student behavior issues — more often than not at the direction of school staff — kids who act out may face charges of disorderly conduct or felony assault.
This year, the College Republicans have said they were “looking forward to” watching an interview with the founder of the Proud Boys, a far-right group with a history of violence; called for the release of Rittenhouse; told a group who called white nationalist Nick Fuentes “a bold young voice” that they are “fighting for what’s right”; repeatedly avowed to report campus individuals to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); supported an immigration moratorium based on the false premise that immigrants cause a “resurgence of diseases”; referred to the Black Lives Matter movement as “Burn, Loot, Murder”; and erroneously claimed transgender identity is caused by mental illness, pornography or a cult.
Don Wirth has been legally blind for 25 years. At 70 years old, he’s at higher risk for COVID-19, so instead of going to the polls and using an accessible voting machine, he voted absentee during the primaries. His wife filled out the paper ballot for him. “I have great confidence that she’s going to fill it out the way I want her to,” Wirth, of Ames, said. But Wirth knows not all blind or otherwise disabled people have a loved one they can trust to help cast their vote. And, he believes, no Iowan should be forced to surrender their privacy to exercise their constitutional right. “Why shouldn’t we have the same access that sighted people do when there are solutions out there that are readily available?” Wirth said.
NPR
Jesus Was Divisive: A Black Pastor’s Message To White Christians
“We shouldn’t be surprised that white Christianity is willing to sacrifice black and brown bodies for the cause of their own personal salvation and relationship with Jesus Christ. That has been part of the history of the American church experience. Of course, they are willing to sacrifice black and brown bodies to hear a full-throated hymn. Of course, they are willing to sacrifice our communities for tithes and offerings. Of course, they are willing to sacrifice the people I grew up with and call that patriotism. And some of them are even going a step further and calling it biblical.”
Rev. Lenny Duncan
This List Of Books, Films And Podcasts About Racism Is A Start, Not A Panacea
To help people be better allies, lists of antiracist books, films and podcasts are being published in droves. There’s never a bad time to learn, but such a list can become erroneously prescriptive, a balm to centuries-old lacerations that cut deeper than the individual reader. As Lauren Michele Jackson wrote for Vulture, “The word [anti-racism] and its nominal equivalent, “anti-racist,” suggests something of a vanity project, where the goal is no longer to learn more about race, power, and capital, but to spring closer to the enlightened order of the antiracist.”
When The ‘Hustle’ Isn’t Enough
The upper echelons of corporate America are beginning to reject so-called “hustle culture.” The founders of Unhustled and Unhustle (completely separate companies) decry the long work hours at their former finance and digital-marketing jobs, respectively. Entrepreneurs, like the founder of 1-800-GOT-JUNK, are speaking out against “performative workaholism.” For society’s elite, hustling may be slowly going out of fashion. The problem is, hustling still isn’t a choice for people who aren’t at the top. There’s a world of difference between staying late at the office to score a promotion and peeing in a bottle to keep your job at an Amazon warehouse. As Tressie McMillan Cottom wrote for Time magazine, “Everyone is hustling, but everyone cannot hustle the same.”
The Unlikely Story Behind Japanese Americans’ Campaign For Reparations
“I know that this kind of thing is never just about money, because money often doesn’t resolve the problem. It goes much deeper than that. It’s the whole issue of racism in America. Until there are efforts made to try to resolve the root causes and to get at the racism, it’s going to be a tough battle to move forward. I have no idea how you resolve something so profound, but we have to try. It can’t just stagnate there and fester like a wound.”
John Tateishi, activist
Isabella Rosario 