Every-Night Fever at the Milonga (2007) 
Migrants Suffer in Mexico (2006) 
Leaving Wall Street (2006) 
Torn Up Over Being Torn Down (2004) Este artículo también está disponible en: Español
I had the thrill and the pleasure of leading Mexico’s most influential business magazine, Expansión, as editor-in-chief for two years. (I was deputy editor for a year before that.) There I was in charge of editorial strategy and managing a team of 20 energetic, young professionals.
We ran some hard-hitting accountability cover stories and refreshed the mag’s influential rankings and special issues. I launched the first-ever English edition and the first-ever digital-only issue. I also wrote Expansión‘s first Manual of Style and helped plan the integration of several newsrooms from Grupo Expansión’s hard news division.
I explained why I left this dream job in this blog post (in Spanish.) Basically, it was a family decision: time for us to follow my wife’s career to another country.
The details about my move to Expansión from The A.P. are here. Here is my first year at the mag in 25 covers (in Spanish.) See this on my promotion to editor-in-chief. And this post has more on what I learned about newsroom leadership at the magazine.
* * *
In late 2008, Expansión had asked me to write a profile of successful businessman and public figure Alejandro Marti for the cover of its December issue, on which it usually names the Person of the Year.
Marti was not in the news solely because he had just sold a controlling interest in the sporting goods and fitness empire he had built. During that fateful year, he had lost a teenage son in the hands of kidnappers and as a consequence had become a leading public figure in the calls for improved public safety. The crime had radically altered his plans for life in semi-retirement and that’s what I tried to portray in the narrative profile I wrote. The piece, however, was also expected to describe the business aspect of the story — quite a narrative challenge.
Reporting was hard, as it involved the private life of a powerful person, and only at the last minute –after I turned in my first draft, in fact– did Marti agree to an interview with the magazine.
Although it wasn’t part of the main thread of the story, I was glad to discover an as-yet unreported nugget: that Marti was a great grandnephew of Cuban independence hero José Marti, although Alejandro’s last name came from a different branch of the family: a niece of the Cuban patriot married Alejandro’s grandfather, Domingo Marti Riera.
* * *
[Expansión posts are in Spanish.]
El barman del moño rosa
Una tarde en la escuela de diseño de Stanford muestra cómo piensan las empresas disruptivas. Usan el design thinking para impulsar a la gente a salir de la zona de confort y sacudirse las maneras institucionales, corporativas, de tener ideas y avanzar proyectos. [ + ]
El sueño del unicornio mexicano
Los mexicanos que presentaban sus pitches en un hotel elegante y minimalista de San Francisco no tenían nada que envidiarles a los otros miles de ‘startuperos’ que pululan por la capital global de la revolución tecnológica con sus ideas de negocio. [ + ]
Un gran paso en mi carrera
Hoy soy el editor general de Expansión. [ + ]
Un año de portadas de Expansión
Un año en cualquier publicación es un largo tiempo. En una revista catorcenal, son 25 ediciones, con el descanso de Navidad y Año Nuevo. Hay grandes éxitos, altibajos, las mejores portadas, las que no les gustan a muchos. [ + ]
El ciudadano Martí
El secuestro y la muerte de su hijo lo empujaron a convertirse en la voz de la gente contra la delincuencia. Eligió la lucha, confrontó a las autoridades y nunca bajó los brazos. [ + ]
El tío bisabuelo José
El prócer y poeta máximo de Cuba, José Martí, que murió peleando por la independencia cubana en 1895, fue antepasado del empresario mexicano Alejandro Martí. [ + ]
* You can also read the Martí story on CNN Expansión’s website or Download it in a pdf file.
