Reforma

Reforma, the Mexican newspaper with a readership of 400,000 (according to Wikipedia) in Mexico City, helped start Mexico’s journalists become more free.

According to 1995 article in Editor and Publisher, in 1993, a newspaper was founded on the ideas that ethics should be a large part of journalism. Reforma’s then-editor Alberto Garza said ethics had been the one thing Mexican journalism has been missing, the Achille’s heel. So, when Reforma was being created, El Norte publisher Alejandro Junco de la Vega created a program to recruit new and inexperienced people to be trained as journalists. Then they became interns for six weeks.

Reforma went through tough times at the beginning, including stores that did not want the paper publishing on holidays, boycotts and selling the newspaper using streethawkers. Eventually, it became one of the most elite newspapers in the country. Reforma helped break the mold for journalism in Mexico.

Forseeing the death of Facebook

Everyone is on Facebook! My boss is on Facebook. And apparently, people are on Facebook much more than they should. After reading the Joereco’s Weblog entry about a Facebook Suicide, I stopped to think how often I search the social Web site. How often do I search to see if a friend has changed her profile picture or who SuperPoke’d who? The blog entry was about a mass Facebook suicide where many people who had allowed Facebook become such a big part of their lives agreed to close their accounts and never go back. What kind of people had allowed Facebook to become such a big part of their lives? After thinking about it, a lot of people do. And I know a few. Luckily, I’m not one of them. I can go days without logging in, and I still call some friends. But I am curious to see what my friends are up to. Unfortunately, I get to see what too many people are up to…

Here’s my gripe, too many people are on Facebook. Where it started as a cool college-only social network, it has become this world-wide phenomenon that everyone has joined. Because of this, a lot of people are starting to give it up because it’s the popular thing. Eventually, a lot of people are going to leave the site because of this, I know I’ve thought of it. MySpace is in now way better. It’s lack of tacky profiles made Facebook my favorite, but as soon as I walked by a budget meeting at the Observer where editors had Facebook projected up on a wall, I knew it was the beginning of the end.  Any thoughts? Do you think Facebook will meet it’s fate soon?

Good advice

While reading through Jessica Brock’s blog, From the Middle of Nowhere to Everywhere, I read one thing that really struck with me. In her Sept. 25 blog about arming yourself with knowledge, she writes, “Never assume that you are completely savvy about a country’s culture (including your own!) – even if you’ve been before and know a mass of people. Things are constantly changing. But by constantly observing and sharing, mistakes and embarrassments can more readily be avoided.” These are words everyone should hear. Many times I’ve been talking to someone who spent six months in Argentina five years ago, but feels they’re an expert in their government policies and culture. There are even times, I might’ve misspoken when talking about Mexico, when I’ve never lived there but only grew up next to it. In society’s competition to know more than the people around you, there are too many times wanting to know more gets the best of us. So, I guess we can all stop and think before we speak and really know what we’re talking about.

Blogrolling

As some of you can tell, I started a blogroll, over on the right. I added sights I constantly search and blogs I like to read. Under ‘Class Weblogs,’ I added the weblogs by my classmates in JOUR713 at the University of North Carolina. So, in this post, I’m adding my answers to Deb’s questions.

1) How important is evaluating an author’s qualifications?

I think it depends on the subject being blogged on. Taking myself as an example, I’m not an expert in Mexican politics or the history of journalism in Mexico. But I did grow up on the Texas/U.S. border and saw first-hand how dangerous it is to be a reporter there. For someone blogging on alternative fuel, I’ll be looking at the blog for his opinion and the information he’s found, not because he’s a scientist. But if a blog is talking about an industry, say aviation, I’d like the person to have a good understanding of how the industry works.

2) How is a blogroll different from other media, how similar?

The media is different from blogrolling because they will not be recommending other sources for you. The media succeeds because it’s supposed to be the only source you need for your information. Blogrolling will send you out into the openness of the World Wide Web, in search of second opinions or similar articles. Blogrolling allows you to spread your wings, in a way.

But they are similar in the way that they provide the news. Sometimes blogs are not as trustworthy as a news article from CNN, but many times, they strive to provide the best information they can.

3) How do you think blogrolling will evolve?

I don’t know how blogrolling will evolve. I didn’t know blogs would grow to be what they are today. But I can hope that in this day of uncertainty in journalism, they will provide a stable place to get your news.

Ethanol as a fuel

My classmate, Boris, is blogging on ethanol at his site, It’s a Gas! In his most recent entry, he talks about the future of energy and whether ethanol is the way to go, and if corn is the best kind of ethanol. I’ve been hearing a lot of different forms of fuel, as everyone has lately, including Willie Nelson’s bio-fuel. But I’ve always wondered, if corn is used as a source of energy, then won’t the price of corn go up? Won’t the price of everything that is made with corn go up? For a lot of people who aren’t looking at it in an environmental perspective and are only looking for cheap fuel, would that be worth it to them? Corn is used in everything, from aluminum to whiskey. So if corn is used as the alternative fuel, will we end up paying for other everyday things like tortillas and salad dressings?

Also, if farmers start producing more corn, will they no longer farm other products, wanting to save the land for corn fields instead? Maybe there’s something I’m missing, but I’d like to know what they have thought of as a solution to my questions.

Worst site for my research

So far, I can only find one that completely fits my subject and yet is not helpful to me.  

International Press Institute

The site only gives me large numbers of dead journalists, instead of details on how they died in Mexico.

Also, I found the worst sites are the ones that want me to pay to read their research.

The best sites for my research

These are the five I saw throughout the week as the best for my research. I picked them on three main standards:

– whether they discuss any major impact journalism has made on Mexico and/or its politics.

– do they have some historical facts about newspapers and their efforts, including the 2000 election where Vicente Fox was elected president?

– does it talk about some of the things Mexican newspapers have done differently from what they had done before.

Lusty New Papers Take On the Powerful in Mexico

How newspaper in Mexico are no longer treating the politicians like celebrities and reporting the news.

Chapter in ‘The Life and Times of Mexico’: Killing the News

How journalists are being murdered.

The Rise and Fall of a Great Mexican Newspaper

One newspaper’s downfall.

Breaking Away: Mexico’s Press Challenges the Status Quo

How the press is challenging history.

To Many, Mexican Press Is Meek . . . But at One Paper, at Least, the Reporters Rake the Muck

How one newspaper tried to make a difference.

The threat to American journalists in Mexico

Mexican journalists aren’t the only ones who are facing the danger reporting in Mexico. Many times, American journalists are targeted with threats, and sometimes death.

In July, the San Antonio Express-News took a reporter, Mariano Castillo, out of their Laredo bureau because of a threat of a hit from a drug cartel. Laredo is a bordertown on the Texas/Mexico border. Just across the Rio Grande is Nuevo Laredo, a Mexican town known for violence. On July 14, Express-News public editor Bob Richter wrote a column in the newspaper. In it, he mentions how editors had met in Nuevo Laredo to discuss ways to give courage to the reporters covering drug trafficking.

Moving Castillo out of Laredo was a difficult decision for them. But they have experience in losing reporters in Mexico. In late 1998, Philip True, a reporter convering the Huichol Indians in the mountains of Mexico, was killed when he embarked on a solo hike. His body was found in an area northwest of Guadalajara. While the killers are still avading capture, it has been found that the indians he had been writing about were the ones who killed him.

While most of my research will be about Mexican journalists and their government, I thought I’d quickly share that those killed in Mexico are not always Mexican, just how Iraqi journalists aren’t the only ones being killed in Iraq.

The start of my research

When asked to think of where the most dangerous place for a journalist to work now is, Iraq always comes to mind. It should. Nearly 112 journalists have been killed in the line of duty since the war began in March 2003, the reasons are obvious, they were killed four doing their job in a war zone.

But the second most dangerous place for journalists isn’t in a war-torn country on the other side of the world. It’s our neighbor to the south, Mexico, where more than 30 journalists have been killed since 2001, according to the Washington Post. But why is there such a large number of journalists dying in a country not at war? The answer could be because they are trying to establish something the country is not familiar with, freedom of the press.

Growing up in a border town, I heard stories about how dangerous being a journalist in Mexico was, many getting killed for asking too many questions, knowing too much of the story. But I heard that being a journalist can be dangerous anywhere you are. Journalists are the ones who would put their lives at risk for a story. But everytime I heard about another Mexican journalist killed, I would ask myself one thing: Why?

As I grew into a journalist and learned about the freedom of the press in the United States, I came to realize that the danger Mexican journalists faced was the lack of that freedom.

Through my research, I hope to find what advances the Mexican government has made to give journalists more freedom in their jobs. I also hope to find out what information found caused some of these reporters to be killed. What did they uncover that they weren’t meant to? And most importantly, what kind of impact has journalism had on Mexican politics?

KEYWORDS I’ll USE: Mexico; politics; government; journalist; freedom of press; impact WEB SITES: Reporting across the border: The challenges of U.S.-Mexico Journalismhttp://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?topic_id=5949&categoryid=357B7E40-65BF-E7DC-44E3EC31B219E598&fuseaction=topics.events_item_topics&event_id=161802Conference on how to be a better journalist working on the U.S./Mexican borderMexico’s Most Wanted Journalist http://www.motherjones.com/interview/2007/05/cacho.html Interview with Lydia Cacho, who made some powerful enemies by exposing Cancun’s sex tourism industry. Now she’s taking a historic civil rights case to Mexico’s highest court.Talli Nauman: Killing Journalists in Mexico http://www.counterpunch.org/nauman01102005.html Details on Mexican journalists being killed Mexico’s press: ready for freedom?
http://www.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~alopez-o/politics/presm.html The first steps Mexico has taken to allow a free press, including setting up conference for the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.Mexico’s Journalists Feel Heavy Hand of Violencehttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/29/AR2007052902132.html Post story about Mexico being the second deadliest country for journalists after Iraq.