The Mexico City News returns

The Mexico City News was published in English for some 50 years until it folded in late 2002. (What was the exact date? Please comment if you know.) Now with the Miami Herald Mexico Edition shutting down, the News will reappear in the late summer - if everything goes as planned.

While things are still in the planning stages, buzz in Mexico City media circles has the paper returning with an O'Farrill family member involved. (The O'Farrill clan originally owned the paper and were also longtime shareholders in Televisa.)

As a reporter, I obviously find this delightful news. Let's hope it works out.

UPDATE: Kelly Arthur Garrett, a former reporter and columnist with the Herald, launched a new blog: http://kellyarthurgarrett.blogspot.com where he provided an interesting analysis of what the old Mexico City News was and what the paper could become. To my knowledge, he has no inside scoop on what's going on with the new News, but since he toiled for the old one, his insights are pertinent.

I used to read the News while living in Colima during the winter of 2002. It would arrive around 3 p.m. from Mexico City and was sold at an excellent newsstand in Los Portales, which fronts the Zocalo. I liked the old News, although since my Spanish was pretty sketchy at the time and I wanted something in English, the News fit the bill.

Garrett commented, "Most English-language efforts have chosen -- or been forced — to fill up their pages with whatever they could get their hands on. They’ve had no journalistic purpose other than to be in English."

He added, "For some reason, there's an assumption among media heavies that English speakers, because they are less well-versed about Mexican society, need to read at the level of six-year-olds. Newspapers by definition are published for the common reader, but the common Anglophone reader in Mexico is not necessarily the boob that these publishers think."

Very true. Most editors have no clue what their readers want. As an example, the Guadalajara Colony Reporter, where I worked for 18 months, puts out a hit-or-miss product. Some of its stuff is gold, but the owners truly believe that few, if any, expats living in Mexico (read: Chalapa, Guadalajara and the places the Reporter is sold) have any interest in Mexican affairs. I visit Chapala on a regular basis, and would disagree.

The Herald was read out in the provinces - when people could actually find it. Circulation was a disaster, though. I could quibble about the Herald's editorial faults - mainly in the community pages - but not being able to purchase a Sunday edition on a regular basis in Mexico's second-largest city was an even bigger problem. I wrote for the Herald and found the editors to be genuinely interested in putting out a quality product - even though there were considerable constraints. That's more than could be said for many English papers that simply need to fill pages. If the Herald lacked anything, it was perhaps a stronger personality. (The Reporter has that with some of its columnists and headlines, although it's an editorially-incoherent publication.)

The News is at least gauging what interests its potential audience. Let's hope it succeeds.

Miami Herald Mexico Edition R.I.P.

By joint decision, El Universal and The Miami Herald pulled the plug on The Miami Herald Mexico Edition. The last issue will be released on May 31. The Herald Mexico now joins an illustrious list of English publications in Mexico to go belly up.

This comes as a surprise, but only a slight one. The paper never sold much advertising and El Universal (the Mexican partner in the venture) was seemingly derelict with handling circulation. I've been told that many El Universal employees simply viewed the English paper as more work for no extra money.

El Universal perhaps also lost its taste for risk. It has already let staff go earlier this year. It also recently oversaw failed Spanish-language publishing ventures. Ultimately, though, the company probably never truly understood the expat market niche. A little more entrepreneurial thinking would have helped too.

I contributed to the paper on a regular basis so yes, this hurts, but it won't be fatal to my economic wellbeing.

Other English-language publications exist in the provinces and many appear to be doing well - attracting ads, but often not putting out a quality product.

Inside Mexico recently launched in Mexico City, although it is a monthly, and a new online project will launch soon. (I'll post details when they become public.)

Another tale of a Canadian experiencing Mexican injustice - or not

An interesting press release (for lack of a better description) from an expatriate couple in the Huatulco area contradicts the woeful story of Peter Kimber, a British Columbia native locked up in an Oaxaca jail who has recently been the subject of nationwide media coverage in Canada.

The Canadian, who was in Mexico with his common-law wife and children, said Mexican authorities tossed him in jail after hotel owners Kevin and Tess Hunneybell supposedly sent the cops after him because of $20,000 that was owed. The money was paid, according to the Hunneybells, for Kimber to construct a building. Kimber's completed work was apparently shoddy.

The couple took exception with this line from The Globe and Mail story on Kimber's plight and the work the Canadian was hired to for:

At a site where he was helping to build a hotel, a dispute developed with the owners who told police that he owed them money.

The Hunneybell's countered:

(Kimber) was NOT ‘helping’ to build the hotel, he WAS the contractor and was paid to do this work. He was later found to be both negligent (unsafe foundations) and illegal (had no permit to work, nor build, nor to remain in the country.)

Kimber's story of spending more than two years in a Mexican jail ran in The Province (Vancouver) on Jan. 31 and later in both national newspapers. Coincidentally, a spate of newspapers stories on Canadians' misfortune have come out around the same time.

This is, unfortunately, part of a feeding frenzy. Canadian newspaper editors generally show a crushing disinterest in Mexican affairs - except when a Canadian tourist meets an untimely end or misfortune. For an alternative opinion on Mexico, a media outlet could run a dispatch from Ajijic, Jalisco, where the Canadian population keeps on swelling each year. It's one of the largest enclaves of Canadians outside of Canada. The Kimber story, though, fits what they're looking for. And, in fairness, Peter Kimber could be the victim of an injustice and his accounts of prison life are certainly hellish.

The Hunneybells perhaps should have scrutinized Kimber's immigration documents - which the couple said were fakes - a little more thoroughly, although in expatriate circles, there tends to be a lot of good will and a willingness to give people the benefit of the doubt. And no shortage of charlatans and people with shady backgrounds pass through.

The other side of this story definitely needs to be reported more thoroughly.

The Mexfiles blog summed up this situation quite nicely and the author quite accurately commented towards the end of his post, "Canadians, for all their good qualities, sometimes can be awfully provincial."

Update: The Globe and Mail reported on Saturday that police in Acapulco impounded a green Nissan Tsuru taxi (aren't all taxis Tsurus in this country?) and are searching for the driver who usually rents the vehicle, which might have struck and killed Ontario native Adam de Prisco on Jan. 7. The family said it hasn't received updates on the case and maintains that de Prisoco was beaten prior to being involved in the hit-and-run collision that two coroners concluded was responsible for his untimely death.