Here’s my first year at Expansión, told through the mag’s cover.

]]> http://www.diegograglia.net/a-year-in-covers/feed/ 0 http://www.diegograglia.net/new-beat-new-job/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-beat-new-job http://www.diegograglia.net/new-beat-new-job/#comments Mon, 07 May 2012 02:09:27 +0000 DG http://www.diegograglia.net/?p=4445 May 2012

After three years at the AP’s Latin American desk, I recently left the news cooperative to become the managing editor at Mexico’s leading business magazine, Expansión.

Born 43 years ago, Expansión underwent a major redesign at the start of 2012, both in visual and conceptual terms.

The team I help lead is charged with taking the mag into a new multiplatform era while upholding its longtime reputation for serious and thorough journalism.

In October, I spent 20 days in the western Mexican city of Guadalajara, working on The A.P.’s coverage of the PanAmerican Games.

In addition to editing hundreds and hundreds of news stories and results tables every day for about 10 to 12 hours –and then writing some–, I also worked on a series of audio slideshows with the goal of enhancing our PanAm package with multimedia content.

It was offered to A.P. clients as part of the coverage, and many ran it on their websites.

Here are the three slideshows produced in this occasion:

Introduction by former world’s No. 1 golfer Lorena Ochoa

Rugby in Mexico:

Basque Pelota:

I used many plugins, but the one that was absolutely key was WPML Multilingual CMS. Without it, I don’t know how I would have managed to make this whole thing bilingual and have the Spanish and the English sides mirror each other so neatly. (I got WPML when it was a free plugin, which it no longer is.)

Other plugins:

- WP Audio Player, which lets me showcase my radio and podcast work.

- BNS Add Widget, which lets me display the link menus you see in the footer.

- Category Page, which helped me create the Archive pages for each media outlet I’ve worked for, listing the corresponding stories very neatly, like here.

- Just One Category, which tells WordPress to display on a category archive page only those posts which are direct members of that category. Helps keep the above-mentioned pages neatly ordered.

- Single Post Template, which I used to create the breadcrumb navigation. Had to create a lot of templates, though, but that’s due to the complex organization of the site’s categories.

- Social Media Widget, which displays the nice little logos for finding me on Twitter, LinkedIn, rss and email, both on the home page and the inside pages.

- Top Level Categories, which removes the prefix from the URL for a category, so that urls are way simpler. That way, you get diegograglia.net/newspapers instead of diegograglia.net/categories/newspapers.

- Tumblrize, which I used to move my old WordPress.com blog to a Tumblr installation at blog.diegograglia.net. I had to manually “Update” every single post, but it was the easiest way I found to import from WordPress to Tumblr.

I also received help from the WordPress community forums and assorted blogs, where I found some answers to my ignorance about php. The rest, I figured out by trial and error. I’m glad it (mostly) worked.

Las dos niñas argentinas que fueron víctimas del Holocausto

Clara Wacht y Matilde Bueno fueron las dos únicas niñas argentinas muertas en el Holocausto. Sus historias pudieron ser reconstruídas por sus familiares. [ + ]

La historia de una cárcel

A sólo 21 años de inaugurada, una enorme cárcel en el medio de Buenos Aires se apresta a ser demolida. [ + ]

Testimonios de los vecinos de Caseros

La única que muestra cierta decepción por la ida del penal y de los presos es la dueña del bar en la vereda de enfrente de la cárcel. [ + ]

As I narrated on the page dedicated to Etiqueta Negra, in August 2008 I went on a roadtrip across the U.S. to talk to Latinos about that year’s historic presidential election.

After the trip, I wrote a narrative feature that was published in different versions in Etiqueta, a Peruvian magazine, and in Salvadoran mag Septimo Sentido (both in Spanish.)

Septimo Sentido‘s version is closer to my original submission: it’s told in the present tense and the narrator (myself) has a bigger presence. Working the same text with two different editors was a very interesting experience, since I could see how the two stories went their separate ways after several rounds of editing for each magazine.

The Salvadoran version, entitled “Un viaje al voto latino”, can be read here:

- Go to story.

- Download in pdf.

In addition to writing many stories for the AP wire on the competition, I live-tweeted matches, posted photos and other comments on Twitter, and created an audio slideshow about the tournament’s first round — an experimentation into what alternative products the agency can offer its online clients.

The slideshow was part of an online interactive used by some clients. As of August 2011, it could still be seen here. (Go to the “A Cuartos” tab for the slideshow.)

Here are some links to news and feature stories that I wrote in Spanish from Mendoza and neighboring San Juan:

• Perú manages draw against Uruguay
• Chile defeats Peru and goes through to second round
• Venezuela reaches semifinals in historic feat
• Paraguay goes to final on penalties
• Chile out despite favorite status
• Uruguay: Abreu wants to be manager and filmmaker
• Venezuela earns new standing in football world

The stories are here in Spanish:

Estados Unidos: ¿Y ahora qué?

Antes de la elección que dará a George W. Bush su segundo mandato, los expertos dicen que no habían visto a la sociedad estadounidense tan profundamente dividida por lo menos desde la época de la guerra de Vietnam, cuando Nixon ganó la reelección. [ + ]

Una droga reaviva contagios de sida en la comunidad gay de Nueva York

Cuando el sida comienza a parecer un mal recuerdo en la comunidad gay de Nueva York, el creciente uso de metanfetaminas puede llevar a un aumento de las conductas sexuales riesgosas, advierten expertos en salud y activistas comunitarios. [ + ]

Fuego en la nieve

De la mano de su mujer Jeanne-Claude, Christo, el artista de las obras gigantescas, llenará el Central Park de color en pleno invierno, con senderos de telas anaranjadas que colgarán de portales de cinco metros. [ + ]

El nuevo MoMA

Después de dos años de exilio en Queens y 858 millones de dólares de renovación, el Museo de Arte Moderno reabre en Manhattan. [ + ]

El renacer del Miami cool

Miami, una ciudad que ha sido sinónimo de lo kitsch, comienza a convertirse en un destino para los más exigentes, en especial las celebridades del mundo de la música y de Hollywood. [ + ]

The texts are here in Spanish:

México: Otro día después

Tras el atentado contra un casino en Monterrey, donde murieron 52 personas, se dijo que era un hito que marcaba "un antes y un después" en la guerra contra el narcotráfico. Pero tras 5 años y 40.000 muertos, ese "después" no parece llegar. [ + ]

El golazo de Cristina

En la maniobra que por unos días pareció revertir los efectos prácticos del descenso de River Plate a la segunda división del fútbol argentino, la única ganadora fue Cristina Fernández, que asestó un nuevo golpe a Clarín. [ + ]

Juicio, mentiras y video

En México, la televisión suele ser el estrado donde desfilan presuntos culpables. No es de extrañar que ahora sea una película la que desnude las falencias del sistema judicial. Ni que sea un éxito de taquilla. Ni que haya sido prohibida por una jueza. [ + ]

Slim versus "los clase media"

El enfrentamiento del magnate con otros pesos pesados mexicanos por el mercado del "triple pack" -internet, telefonía y televisión pagada- ha estado marcado por acusaciones cruzadas de prácticas monopólicas. Los clientes, bien gracias. [ + ]

Júntate con esa chusma

El incremento de la población hispana es la tendencia demográfica más importante del siglo XXI en Estados Unidos. Suficiente como para que hasta la cadena de noticias que más los ha demonizado esté ahora tratando de cortejarlos. [ + ]