the kicker

Mexican newsrooms

Worse than you think
May 29, 2007

While American reporters duke it out over subjects like Web vs. print and how many gray hairs are being forced into buyout deals, reporters in other countries have a whole different set of problems.

Think you got it bad? Try being a reporter for the thirteen year-old Mexican paper Cambio Sonora, which closed its doors last Thursday due to two recent grenade attacks on its offices launched by drug traffickers. And this isn’t some mom and pop operation. The paper is part the Mexican Editorial Organization, a chain of seventy newspapers throughout in Mexico, which also operates two dozen radio outlets and a TV station.

The move is only temporary, according to Mario Vazquez Rana, president of the MEO, but its circumstances are nowhere near as gruesome as the severed head of a local politician recently found dumped outside the offices of the Tabasco Hoy’s offices in Mexico. “It has all the characteristics of an act of intimidation and an attempt to silence the freedom of information that the publishers exercise,” Tabasco Hoy said in a statement quoted by The AP. The AP also tells us that “Mexican drug gangs often decapitate rivals as a means of intimidation and are blamed for killing dozens of Mexican journalists in recent years.”

Something to think about next time you complain about the air conditioning in the newsroom.

Paul McLeary is a former CJR staff writer. Since 2008, he has covered the Pentagon for Foreign Policy, Defense News, Breaking Defense, and other outlets. He is currently a defense reporter for Politico.