Reforma
Encyclopedia
Reforma is a Mexican
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

 newspaper based in Mexico City
Mexico City
Mexico City is the Federal District , capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole...

. It has 276,700 readers in Mexico City. The paper shares content with other papers in parent newsgroup Grupo Reforma
Grupo Reforma
Grupo Reforma is the largest printed media company in Mexico and Latin America. It publishes ten daily newspapers in five cities, including the leading newspapers in Mexico's three largest cities: Reforma in Mexico City, El Norte in Monterrey and Mural in Guadalajara...

. The cumulative readership of the newsgroup is above 400,000. Reforma is named after the Mexico City avenue of the same name, Paseo de la Reforma
Paseo de la Reforma
Paseo de la Reforma is a wide avenue that runs in a straight line, cutting diagonally across Mexico City. It was designed by Ferdinand von Rosenzweig in the 1860s and modeled after the great boulevards of Europe, such as Vienna's Ringstrasse or the Champs-Élysées in Paris...

, which is in turn named after "La Reforma
La Reforma
La Reforma was a period halfway through the 19th century in the history of Mexico that was characterized by liberal reforms and the transformation of Mexico into a nation state...

": a series of liberal reforms undertaken by the country in the mid 19th century.

The newspaper emphasizes its design
Graphic design
Graphic design is a creative process – most often involving a client and a designer and usually completed in conjunction with producers of form – undertaken in order to convey a specific message to a targeted audience...

, variety of columnists, and editorials that denounce political corruption. Reforma, along with the other newspapers of its parent, have an interest in color printing.

The paper features weekly translations from selected articles of local interest from U.S. newspapers. These include The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

and The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....

. The Sunday edition of Reforma includes a supplemental magazine, titled Top Magazzine, which covers celebrity gossip, Hollywood previews and interviews.

History

Reforma was founded in 1993, as an offshoot of El Norte, the noted Monterrey
Monterrey
Monterrey , is the capital city of the northeastern state of Nuevo León in the country of Mexico. The city is anchor to the third-largest metropolitan area in Mexico and is ranked as the ninth-largest city in the nation. Monterrey serves as a commercial center in the north of the country and is the...

-based daily. Reforma was the first newsgroup in Mexico to separate its commercial division from its journalism division. This allowed for a greater independence in journalism, and helps journalists resist the temptation of writing favorable notes on sponsors.

When it was founded, on November 20, the newspaper pressured unionized newsstands to sell the paper on that day. Since November 20 is the Mexican Revolution
Mexican Revolution
The Mexican Revolution was a major armed struggle that started in 1910, with an uprising led by Francisco I. Madero against longtime autocrat Porfirio Díaz. The Revolution was characterized by several socialist, liberal, anarchist, populist, and agrarianist movements. Over time the Revolution...

 day, an obligatory public holiday in México, the unions refused, and so Reforma had to be sold on the streets by journalists and celebrities, as a protest against what they considered "a boycott".

Reforma changed the traditional distribution of newspapers because of its independence from the unionized newsstands and printed media resellers. It also was innovative because of the inclusion of people of all political opinions in its editorial pages.

The newsgroup is 85 years old. It all started with the founding of El Sol in April 1922, followed by El Norte in 1938, Monterrey's Metro in 1988, Reforma in 1993, Palabra and Mexico City's Metro in 1997, Mural in 1998, Saltillo
Saltillo
Saltillo is the capital city of the northeastern Mexican state of Coahuila and the municipal seat of the municipality of the same name. The city is located about 400 km south of the U.S. state of Texas, and 90 km west of Monterrey, Nuevo León....

's Metro in 2004 and Guadalajara
Guadalajara
Guadalajara may refer to:In Mexico:*Guadalajara, Jalisco, the capital of the state of Jalisco and second largest city in Mexico**Guadalajara Metropolitan Area*University of Guadalajara, a public university in Guadalajara, Jalisco...

's Metro in 2005.

Grupo Refoma's independent journalism drew the ire of the powerful Mexico City's carrier union barely a year after it was born. This syndicate controls distribution of all newspapers in the capital city and was traditionally used by the political system to bring down any paper that was deemed unacceptable. The carried union boycotted the distribution of Reforma in Mexico City in October 1994. Grupo Reforma decided to create and independent distribution channel to sell Reforma in Mexico City's streets. The support of the readers was incredible: intellectuals, artists and regular folks joined Reforma's personnel in the process to create this channel. Dozens of people went to the streets to sell the paper, withstandin the verbal and even physical violence of the carrier union. Currently, Reforma is distributed independently to the homes of 85,000 subscribers, to supermarkets and other retail outlets and to readers in Mexico City's streets. The paper's daily circulation averages 200,000 coopies.

Grupo Reforma's dailies have an open journalism model that is very different from any newspaper in the world. One of the cornerstones of this model are the editorial boards. Each section of all of the papers has an editorial board, which is a group of readers and leaders in the section's area of interest that get together weekly or bi-monthly to set the section's editorial agenda. For example, the editorial board of Reforma's national section may include a diputado (member of house of representatives), a senator, several politicians, some members of NGO's, as well as normal readers, like housewives, students, etc...

The boards have complete liberty of action in setting what the paper is covering. The board is led by each section's editor, so the board members are working with the person who is directly responsible for the daily operation of the section.

Each board session is divided in two parts. In the first one, the board members criticize the content of the session since the last time they met. What was done right? What needs to be corrected? What was plainly wrong? These and other similar topics are dealt with in this first discussion.

During the next step in the session, the discussion centers on the work ahead. What stories should the section be working on? Who should the paper be interviewing? Are there any events that are worth covering? It is in this part of the meeting where the editorial agenda is defined by the group.

Each year, 850 people are part of the 70 editorial boards that define the editorial agenda for all of Grupo Reforma's papers. More than 8 thousand people have been members of an editorial board during the 15 years that they have been in operation. Participation is voluntary, so no payment is given out to the board members. The "payment" they receive is to see how they indeed are setting the agenda for some of the most influential newspapers in Mexico and thus collaborating to transform the country. The boards are renewed every year, but a couple of the members are chosen by the same board to stay on, so there is some continuity with any work in progress that was left behind. Every quarter, the editor gives his/her board a balance of all the suggestions they've provided and how they have been implemented in the section.

Accusations of bias

The newspaper is, as the other publications of the editorial group, non-partisan, with a clear writing style which favors neutral points of view, and publishing opinions from journalists of all political positions (such as Miguel Ángel Granados Chapa
Miguel Ángel Granados Chapa
Miguel Ángel Granados Chapa , was a Mexican journalist writing for the Reforma newspaper. He was the recipient of the Premio Nacional de Periodismo in 2004 for his career, and again in 2006 for his column...

 from the left, and Sergio Sarmiento from the right). The newspaper has many fail-safes in place to prevent a partisan point of view in any case.

Despite its avowed independent editorial style, Reforma has been labeled as a right-wing newspaper in references by The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

, Clarin
Clarín (newspaper)
Clarín is the largest newspaper in Argentina, published by the Grupo Clarín media group. It was founded by Roberto Noble on 28 August 1945. It is politically centrist but popularly understood to oppose the Kirchner government...

, the San Antonio Express-News
San Antonio Express-News
The San Antonio Express-News is the daily newspaper of San Antonio, Texas. It is ranked as the third-largest daily newspaper in the state of Texas in terms of circulation, and is one of the leading news sources of South Texas, with offices in Austin, Brownsville, Laredo, and Mexico City...

, the University of Miami school of communication
University of Miami
The University of Miami is a private, non-sectarian university founded in 1925 with its main campus in Coral Gables, Florida, a medical campus in Miami city proper at Civic Center, and an oceanographic research facility on Virginia Key., the university currently enrolls 15,629 students in 12...

, and the The Princeton Progressive Nation
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

. Former presidential candidate Andres Manuel López Obrador
Andrés Manuel López Obrador
Andrés Manuel López Obrador , also known as AMLO or El Peje, is a Mexican politician who held the position of Head of Government of the Federal District from 2000 to 2005, before resigning in July 2005 to contend the 2006 presidential election, representing the unsuccessful Coalition for the Good...

 has also accused the paper of this bias, and even denounced the paper of being a "press bulletin for the PAN". However, the paper itself has columnists who openly support Andrés Manuel López Obrador, such as Guadalupe Loaeza, Lorenzo Meyer, and Miguel Ángel Granados Chapa.

Another alleged bias of the newspaper is to be in favor of privatizing the Electrical Utilities (CFE,LyF). After the Enron collapse, this bias has diminished.

Notable columnists

  • Carmen Aristegui
    Carmen Aristegui
    Carmen Aristegui is a Mexican journalist born in Mexico City. She graduated from Mexico's Universidad Nacional Autónoma with a degree in communication sciences...

    , political commentator
  • Carlos Fuentes
    Carlos Fuentes
    Carlos Fuentes Macías is a Mexican writer and one of the best-known living novelists and essayists in the Spanish-speaking world. He has influenced contemporary Latin American literature, and his works have been widely translated into English and other languages.-Biography:Fuentes was born in...

    , novelist
  • Carlos Monsiváis
    Carlos Monsiváis
    Carlos Monsiváis Aceves was a Mexican writer, critic, political activist, and journalist. of French decent He also wrote political opinion columns in leading newspapers and was considered to be an opinion leader within the country's progressive sectors. His generation of writers includes Elena...

    , writer and journalist
  • Denise Dresser
    Denise Dresser
    Denise Eugenia Dresser Guerra is a Mexican political analyst, writer, and university professor. She is currently a faculty member of the Department of Political Science at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México , where she teaches courses such as Comparative Politics, Political Economy,...

    , political analyst
  • Enrique Krauze
    Enrique Krauze
    Enrique Krauze Kleinbort is a Mexican historian, essayist and publisher. He is president of the publisher Editorial Clío and director of the cultural magazine ....

    , historian
  • Everardo Elizondo
    Everardo Elizondo
    Everardo Elizondo Almaguer is a noted Mexican economist who has worked for private, public, and academic institutions.He was born in Linares, Nuevo León. After earning a bachelor's degree with honors in economics from the Autonomous University of Nuevo Leon, he studied a master's degree and a PhD,...

    , economist
  • Gabriel Zaid
    Gabriel Zaid
    Gabriel Zaid is a Mexican writer, poet and intellectual.He was born in the city of Monterrey, Nuevo León, in 1934. He studied Engineering at the Tecnológico de Monterrey....

    , writer and poet
  • Germán Dehesa
    Germán Dehesa
    Germán Dehesa was a Mexican journalist, academic and writer.Dehesa was born in Mexico City on July 1, 1944. He studied both Hispanic literature and chemical engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico....

    , political commentator
  • Hector Zagal
    Hector Zagal
    Hector Jesús Zagal Arreguín is a Mexican philosopher, essayist and novelist. As a scholar he specializes in Aristotle.-Academic career:Zagal has written books on ecology, ethics, Aristotle, gastronomy and literature. He obtained a PhD from the Universidad de Navarra, with a dissertation on...

    , philosopher.
  • Homero Aridjis
    Homero Aridjis
    Homero Aridjis is a Mexican poet, novelist, environmental activist, journalist and diplomat known for his independence.-Family and Early Life:...

    , poet, environmentalist
  • Jorge G. Castañeda, intellectual, academic, and former Secretary of Foreign Affairs
    Secretary of Foreign Affairs (Mexico)
    In Mexico, the Secretary of Foreign Affairs is a member of the federal executive cabinet with responsibility for implementing the country's foreign policy. The secretary is appointed by the President of the Republic and heads the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs ...

    .
  • José Luis Lezama
    José Luis Lezama
    Doctor José Luis Lezama.-Career:José Luis Lezama earned his PhD in Social Sciences with specialization in Environmental Policy at the Faculty of Environmental Studies, University College London in the United Kingdom. Dr...

    , intellectual, environmentalist
  • José Woldenberg
    José Woldenberg
    José Woldenberg Karakowski is a Mexican sociologist. He was the first president of the Federal Electoral Institute and serves as the current director of Nexos magazine....

    , political analyst, and former president of the IFE
    Federal Electoral Institute
    The Federal Electoral Institute is an autonomous, public organization responsible for organizing federal elections in Mexico, that is, those related to the election of the President of the United Mexican States and to the election of the members of the Lower and Upper Chambers that constitute the ...

    .
  • Juan Villoro
    Juan Villoro
    Juan Villoro is a Mexican writer and journalist. He has been well known among intellectual circles in Mexico, Latin America and Spain for years, but his success among the readers grew since receiving the Herralde Prize for his novel El testigo.-Biography:Juan Villoro received his bachelor's degree...

    , writer
  • Lorenzo Meyer, political analyst
  • Luis F. Aguilar, political analyst
  • Luis Rubio, political commentator, economist
  • Manuel Sánchez
    Manuel Sánchez
    Manuel Sánchez may refer to:* Manolo , full name Manuel Sánchez Delgado* Manuel Sánchez * Manuel Sánchez , 2011 member of the Mexico Davis Cup team...

    , Economist
  • Mario Vargas Llosa
    Mario Vargas Llosa
    Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, 1st Marquis of Vargas Llosa is a Peruvian-Spanish writer, politician, journalist, essayist, and Nobel Prize laureate. Vargas Llosa is one of Latin America's most significant novelists and essayists, and one of the leading authors of his generation...

    , novelist
  • Miguel Ángel Granados Chapa
    Miguel Ángel Granados Chapa
    Miguel Ángel Granados Chapa , was a Mexican journalist writing for the Reforma newspaper. He was the recipient of the Premio Nacional de Periodismo in 2004 for his career, and again in 2006 for his column...

    , intellectual and political analyst
  • Paco Calderón
    Paco Calderón
    Francisco "Paco" Calderón is a Mexican political cartoonist. He currently draws for the newspapers that belong to the Grupo Reforma....

    , political cartoonist
  • Rafael Segovia, political analyst
  • Sergio Aguayo
    Sergio Aguayo
    Sergio Aguayo Quezada is a Mexican academic and human rights activist. He has been a professor and researcher for El Colegio de México since 1977 and a member of the Mexican Researchers National System -Biography:Sergio Aguayo is a Researcher at Colegio de México and has taught at the Centro...

    , political analyst
  • Sergio Sarmiento, political analyst

Affiliations

Reforma is part of the Grupo Reforma
Grupo Reforma
Grupo Reforma is the largest printed media company in Mexico and Latin America. It publishes ten daily newspapers in five cities, including the leading newspapers in Mexico's three largest cities: Reforma in Mexico City, El Norte in Monterrey and Mural in Guadalajara...

. Grupo Reforma is a collection of Mexican media outlets. Within Grupo Reforma, Reforma is an offshoot of El Norte.

Famous sections

  • Mario Netas
    Mario Netas
    Mario Netas is an internet animated cartoon airing weekly in the online website of the Mexican newspaper Reforma. The cartoon depicts a talk show hosted by a wooden dummy named Mario inviting Mexican and foreign newsmakers to explain current news. It was first aired on March 16, 2005. On April 14...

    is an animated cartoon airing weekly and depicts a talk show about a dummy named Mario inviting Mexican and foreign newsmakers to explain current news.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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