User:Jimmbudd

The News is a Mexican English-language newspaper that is published in Mexico City five days per week, Monday through Friday. With the exception of the five years between 2002 and 2007, the newspaper has published continuously since its founding on July 5, 1950. It is now owned by Mexican media company Grupo Mac. The first edition of The News appeared on July 5, 1950 as a sister publication to the Mexico City daily Novedades. Nearly a decade before, Romulo O’Farrill had taken over the Publicaciones Herrerias group—which included Novedades -- reportedly at the behest of Miguel Aleman. Aleman would serve as President of Mexico from 1946 until 1952 (Mexican presidents are limited to a single six-year term). O’Farrill was a successful businessman from Puebla, home state of Gen. Manuel Avila Camacho, who preceded Aleman in the presidency. O’Farrill’s son, Romulo Junior, married one of Avila Camacho’s daughters. Aleman reportedly had a financial interest in Publicaciones Herrerias – which would become Novedades Editores – but since these were privately held corporations, no public records exist. In 1958 Ramon Beteta, who had been Finance Minister under Aleman, became editor-in-chief of the Novedades newspapers, which included The News. Beteta in 1960 brought to The News Jim Budd, a recent graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism. Budd spent his adolescent years in Littleton, New Hampshire, home town of the then U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Robert C. Hill. By 1964, Budd was editor of The News. He replaced Bill Shanahan, who in the 1950s had studied at Mexico City College on the GI Bill. Prior to Shanahan, Jim Arnold and Luis Moreno Verdin served as editors. Jim Arnold returned to the United States, Moreno Verdin remained in Mexican as a correspondent until his retirement and Shanahan, after several years as Latin American public relations director for what is now Merck Pharmaceuticals, on retirement returned to Mexico City. Original aim of The News was to provide “news from home” for the growing American expatriate community as well as for the increasing number of tourists visiting Mexico. Improvements were made. Copley News Service loaned its Howard Taylor to improve design. Taylor sought increase circulation, but the publishers already were claiming 25,000 when printing only 5,000 copies a day. Increasing circulation would have meant buying more newsprint and spending more on distribution, neither of which was considered wise. Nonetheless, as the result of a survey by Grant Advertising, Beteta issued instructions to Budd to print more articles about Mexico. Goal was to make The News the main source of information about the country not only for residents and tourists, but also for foreign diplomats and news correspondents, many of whom understood only limited Spanish. Budd arranged for Associated Press and United Press International correspondents to send copies of their reports to The News. As a result, The News won a reputation for being the most reliable paper in the country. The foreign correspondents were given bylines in The News, but no mention was made of either AP or UPI. At the time, foreign news organizations were allowed to distribute international news in Mexico and news about Mexico abroad, they were forbidden to distribute Mexico news within Mexico. While some saw this as censorship, the official reason was to protect Mexican news organizations from foreign competition. Beteta died in 1965, less than a year after Budd had become editor. Beteta was replaced by Romulo O’Farrill, Junior, who helped manage his family’s interests in Televisa, at the time Mexico’s only national television network. Although he asked to see editorials before they were published as well as a list of articles that would be printed, Junior O’Farrill seldom interfered with the editing of The News. Starting in1964, the paper had faced competition from The Mexico City Times, but The Times expired after three-years. While The Times existed, The News was allowed to increase its staff and its salaries. Until then, it offered no more than Novedades paid, but Novedades staffers were expected to accept gratifications from their sources and increase their income with commissions resulting from the sale of advertising. Now offering higher salaries and with the 1968 Olympic Games on the horizon, The News managed for the first time to attract experienced professional journalists, including Pieter van Bennekom, who later would become general director of United Press International, and Alfonso Chardy. Chardy went on to the Miami Herald, where he shared a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the Iran-Contra affair. In 1976, Luis Echeverria became President of Mexico. With his father’s health declining, Junior largely assumed control of the newspapers and showed every intent of ingratiating himself with the new administration. Budd later would admit that he ignored Junior O’Farrill’s warnings advising him to print nothing that might irritate the new president’s team. Occasionally material supplied by foreign correspondents fell into that category. In April, 1972, O’Farrill informed Budd that Echeverria’s office had requested that Budd be replaced. Later, and with much greater difficulty, Echeverria forced Excelsior -- then the leading newspaper in the country -- to dismiss its editor, Julio Scherer.

Budd’s replacement at The News was Jaime Plenn, the 67-year-old managing editor. Plenn, a life-long journalist, had worked for several years at the Mexico City bureau of United Press International. He died in 1978, replaced by Sam Askinazy, who since 1962 had been entertainment editor at The News. Askinazy also died on the job. (Budd, for his part, moved on to become the first editor of the then American-owned Mexican business magazine Expansión.) Roger Toll was named editor of The News following the death of Sam Askinazy. Though new to Mexico, Toll had worked as a reporter at two newspapers in Southern California as well as the Baltimore Sun and the Baltimore News American. He also had eight years of experience in publications in India, which Romulo O’Farrill Jr. considered as useful experience in understanding Mexico. Toll obtained a considerable degree of control over the newspaper’s editorial content as well as a much larger budget. With these, he set about redirecting the newspaper to an international community modeled on the Paris-based Herald Tribune, in order to capture the powerful Mexican entrepreneurial class, often fluent English readers, and the international business and diplomatic community, without sacrificing American readers. He also changed the name from The News to The Mexico City News. To do this, Toll expanded and repositioned the business section on the back page of the tabloid-format newspaper and appointed columnist and veteran Mexico business analyst, Patricia Nelson, business editor; increased European and Latin American sports news to balance U.S. sports coverage; hired Judy Hevrdjes, from the Chicago Tribune (to which she would later return) to inaugurate a daily Lifestyle section focused on cooking, décor, fashion and entertainment; launched five weekly supplements on a broad range of topics, including Encuentro, a probing analysis of politics and culture, and World Paper, a supplement on global politics; hired publications designer Roger Black to create a new look for the newspaper, and  contracted an international mix of wire services to appeal to an international readership. Within a year, Toll had more than doubled the size of the editorial staff, the number of pages in each issue and pages of advertising. Toll claims that his editorship earned the wrath of John Gavin, then U.S. ambassador to Mexico, who campaigned for the dismissal of Toll in a series of letters to Junior O’Farrill complaining about what he saw as an editorial slant against U.S. policies in Central America. The U. S. State Department received copies of the ambassador’s letters, which contravened Washington’s policies against interfering in the editorial positions of foreign newspapers. Gavin also was involved in a physical altercation with a television reporter as well as a feud with the Los Angeles Times. He resigned as ambassador in 1986. That was a time when in-bond “maquiladores” assembly plants were expanding along the Mexican-U.S. border, Toll proposed to O’Farrill Junior a border edition of The News. O’Farrill vetoed the plan. Considering that he had taken the newspaper as far as he could, Toll chose instead to develop a new Mexican magazine titled Eco. Noted New York journalist Pete Hamill expressed interest in taking over the position of editor in chief. Toll proposed the change to O’Farrill, pointing out that Hamill could improve local reporting following years of writing and editing experience at New York City newspapers. After accepting the proposal, O’Farrill was irritated with Hamill’s editorial coverage of a student strike at UNAM, the largest university in Mexico, which he saw as weighted heavily toward the students. This led within months to Hamill’s dismissal. Financial columnist Roberto Mena became editor, followed by business section chief Patricia Nelson, who held the post intermittently. Michael Zamba held the job for two years starting in 1990, made several improvements, found himself in conflict with the company’s new general manager,who was concerned with increasing revenue, insisting that the name of no commercial enterprise be mentioned unless payment was received. Zamba pointed out that professional athletic teams are commercial enterprises and asked how the sports pages should handle their reports. Zamba’s contract was not renewed. Complaints over censorship remained a constant problem. “Most of the editorial staff at The News was working illegally in violation of Mexican immigration laws,” Patricia Nelson recalled in an interview shortly before her death in 2012. “The government knew about this, accepted the situation, but obviously was in a position to insist on a bland editorial policy. Too often, those who served as editors failed to realize this.” Nelson herself moved over to become editor of a reincarnated Mexico City Times, which also went on to fail. So, the, did The News, which went into a coma following the death of Noveades in 2002. Noveades had openly opposed the candidacy of Vicente Fox, elected President in 2000 and even ordered The News prior to the election to publish nothing about him. Fox was the first opposition candidate in nearly a century to win a presidential election. Once he took office, government advertising in Noveades ended. In 2007, Victor Hugo O’Farrill and Victor Hugo O’Farrill, Junior, launched a new version of The News (but not Noveades), selling the resurrected dailoy in 2009 to Grupo Mac, publishers of newspapers in states surrounding Mexico City and operators of eight radio stations. Other English-language publications come and go, but The News somehow survives.