Mexico's only English-language daily sold; staff cut by two-thirds

Mexico’s only national English-language daily newspaper, the News, based in Mexico City, was bought by a Mexican media company, and dozens of staffers were laid off over the weekend, a development that left employees standing outside the newspaper’s offices “looking bewildered,” according to an editorial in the paper Monday morning.

The newspaper will continue publishing with a third of its original staff but will offer a smaller daily edition and will no longer publish on the weekends.

An unsigned editorial in Monday’s issue of the News takes a swing at the former owner, Victor Hugo O'Farill, for the way in which staff were laid off at the end of last week. Those present said they were met by a group of lawyers who gave them the news.

“There are ways of treating employees that Mexico must learn if it truly wants to be a member of the OECD [Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development] and not be perceived, rightly or wrongly, as a third-world backwater …" says the editorial.

 “When you lay off dozens of employees by surprise -- as happened at the News on Friday, and as is to be expected in any merger, anywhere, particularly during an economic crisis -- make a personal appearance to break the news. ... [F]ire people yourself, thank them for their hard work and effort and face any possible backlash, rather than leaving the dirty work to the lackeys and muscle-for-hire.”

All 40 employees on the paper were laid off on Friday at the end of last week, but 14 of them were rehired by Grupo Mac that same day, said Malcolm Beith, who was elevated from national editor to editor.

O'Farill, whose grandfather founded the news in 1950, said in a telephone interview that his family lacked the resources necessary to continue running the newspaper.

"The News needs to be in a bigger editorial company. It's an excellent title. We've had great editorial results, amazing collaborators, and have won design awards, but we didn't have the capacity to give it the energies necessary to survive and it was at risk.

"The costs were very high for such a small newspaper."

The paper has just two reporters but will be translating Spanish-language content into English from other Grupo Mac titles (which includes the newspaper Cambio).

Former staff say that the former owner promised to give employees three months' severance and 20 days' pay for every year they’d worked for the paper. Instead, employees have been offered 30 days of severance pay.

But O'Farill said that it is his understanding that the former owners did not violate any labor laws in making severance offers to ex-employees.

The News in its current incarnation has been publishing daily in Mexico since October 2007 but before that existed in Mexico from 1950 until 2002. The newspaper uses the motto “Mexico Explained” on its masthead.

Below is the full editorial:

Explaining our transition

It was an image not unlike those we have published a thousand times. A group of employees of a Mexican company standing outside their office, bewildered, having been mistreated by their employer. This time, we were on the receiving end: The News has been bought by Grupo Mac, a media company that owns Cambio, Rumbo de México and Estadio, among other publications.

The fault does not lie with them -- they are the acquiring company. The fault lies with Víctor Hugo O'Farill, the former owner of The News. The fault, too, lies with Mexico.

At The News, we have never had an agenda of focusing on the negative or tarnishing someone's name for the sake of it. But we do consider it our obligation to point out faults in the system that holds Mexico back.

There are ways of treating employees that Mexico must learn if it truly wants to be a member of the OECD and not be perceived, rightly or wrongly, as a third-world backwater.

When you run or own a small company like The News, which operates more for the greater good than it does the bottom line, treat your employees with respect and humanity. If you don't, it will come back to haunt you, as you will have a reputation preceding you when you try to hire new employees for your newest venture.

If you are going to give employees contracts, give them real ones that clearly spell out their rights and yours. There is no point in creating false contracts filled with loopholes - your employees know you are giving them a raw deal and they will never invest what you need -- their lives and hearts -- into your firm.

When you lay off dozens of employees by surprise -- as happened at The News on Friday, and as is to be expected in any merger, anywhere, particularly during an economic crisis - make a personal appearance to break the news. ... [F]ire people yourself, thank them for their hard work and effort and face any possible backlash, rather than leaving the dirty work to the lackeys and muscle-for-hire.

Last year, Mexico passed reforms that, according to the World Bank, made it easier to close a business but fell 14 spots to 56th place in terms of ease of doing business. It failed to make any improvements regarding treatment of employees. According to the World Bank, wealthy investors were among the most vocal opponents of some of the most heralded reforms. The nation must do much, much more.

In any case, The News continues. Our editorial line will remain the same. The foreigners on our staff love living in this country, of which our Mexican colleagues are an integral part. We will continue to report on the reality of Mexico - the good and bad - as we see it from our perspective.

We will be streamlining -- to 24 pages, Monday through Thursday. (On Friday you will receive a 32-page weekend edition; we will no longer be publishing on Saturday and Sunday. We, too, enjoy our weekends.)

Content-wise, I'm pleased to say we will be increasing our focus on Mexico, thanks to the Grupo Mac resources at our disposal. We expect that working with our partners - with their reporting and editing resources, their knowledge of Mexico and their experience in publishing newspapers here - to be nothing but fruitful. We also hope to use our experience in the business here - we did win a global design award or two, and some of our reporting has been worthy of awards, even if we are not eligible for any major ones - to help lift the standards for Mexican journalism, which has been improving for years.

We hope you continue with us as we cover and uncover Mexico -- and also, please bear with us as we deal with the adjustments of the merger -- and we look forward to being your primary source of news in this wonderfully exciting country.

The News editorial, Monday June 1st, 2009

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

*edited Monday 7pm Mexico City Time.

Photo: The first issue of the News in 2007. Deborah Bonello / MexicoReporter.com

Comments

[Don't Buy The News]

After making the change you have written about, it looks like The News will sink again. Word has it that the new owners of The News have fired editors for not pushing their pro-PRI agenda. Today word has it that the entire staff quit and that now The News is being run by people that know zero about the community, have paper thin resumes and can't even speak English. I believe these actions show that these new owners don't care about the community or their employees.

I've cancelled my subscription.

[Olegonzo]

The newspaper was top-heavy with foreign (non-Mexican) managers and had no Mexican reporters on staff. It took almost two years to set up the website. They spent heavily on design and scrimped on reporting (most of the copy was wire and the NYT News Service with "Usual Suspect" columnists). A daily in this market should have had a crime blotter for Mexico City and invested heavily in coverage of the diverse expat community. And it wouldn't have hurt to hire some local Mexican reporters, even if the copy would have had to be translated and subbed. I worry that under the new regime they will simply translate articles from the Mexican press that isn't exactly directed at the readership of an expat newspaper. In the end I think the paper was going for the "glossy sizzle" in order to get high-dollar ad revenue. I would have loved to have seen a spunky daily with tons of original reporting even if it wasn't printed color on every page with high-dollar heavy-stock paper.

This isn't the first time a startup burned through its money in the first two years of operations with expensive mistakes. And at least one member of the staff did the same thing at a Enlgish-language publication in Mexico City years ago -- investing in pricey office real estate and over-paying in content. Anyone starting up something like this should budget five years of frugality and losses. But as is often the case, these snazzy pubs burn though their reserves making dumb decisions expecting BMW ad revenue to keep them afloat.

And the delay in implementing the web operations is a tragic mistake for a daily start-up in this day and age.

I hope lessons were learned this time. Unfortunately, as is often the case, staff members are more interested in getting as much money as possible instead of working scrupulously, counting every centavo, and focusing more on content and editorial voice rather than glossy, full-color pages that might be impressive in a quarterly report but don't offer as much to a daily news publication.

[michael werbowski]

I was on the staff of the news for just one month ..last May. I was trained and hired as so called business editor... My treatment perhaps compared to my other less fortunate colleagues was quite decent.. I received a very generous severance package for my time and work there..But overall, this is the latest sad episode not only in the history of this daily, the News, but the Mexican press in general. I witnessed much worse during the 2000-2003 period, as a collaborator with Excelsior of Mexico and saw the grand old newspaper become a trashy flashy tabloid compared to its former status..read my piece on www.worldpress.org entitled The Rise and Fall of a Great Mexican newspaper.. many daily papers here are riven with labour conflicts, sinister machinations ,corruption and even thievery within the top ranks of the editorial and management... the newspaper scene is very fragmented and commercially oriented..all this and on top of it, the very perilous state of just being a journalist in Mexico and being able to do your job without fear and intimidation... Mexico has some great news publications and reporters who work under the most dangerous and difficult circumstances.. but sadly, greedy and ruthless management operations make our lives here even more of a hardship..but that´s what you have to live with these days a journalist...

[JLibbey]

I always enjoyed reading the News when I lived in Mexico. I hope the paper can make it through these very difficult times as it provides an different perspective than any of the Spanish language newspapers.

[curtis]

i have to agree with Sue on this one. Understaffed newsrooms are desperately trying to hold themselves up to journalistic standards of old, and yet readers complain about small typos or accents that screw up on the web (in many cases, because the web product is done electronically) Why are newspapers dying? Because all some readers can do is complain about the little things instead of enjoying their morning read. The business folks hear about the whining, and think: nobody likes the product, we'd better dump it.
start putting up with funny accents Charles, or soon your only source of news will be your friend the blogger who blogs about what he wrote on his own blog that day because he won't have any news to blog about.

[Sue]

Charles,

You need to relax, stop being petty and look at the big picture. You're focusing on misplaced accents? I'd argue that their original content was informative and relevant, and it often offered perspective on Mexico that you couldn't find elsewhere.

Many of those journalists laid off from The News were underpaid and overloaded, even putting in hours on their weekends. But they soldiered on day to day because it was more than a job to them. And they did it on a very skeleton crew.

You say: "I can only hope this new company can perk it up to the level of a national daily paper in English. It ain´t that hard to do."

Look, I've worked at major daily newspapers in the United States, and, believe me, it IS hard to do. And that's with a newsroom staff of hundreds, not a couple dozen.

You claim it's easy... but why don't you edit your own writing? You spelled O'Farill wrong, buddy.

[Fran Whitehead]

Charles,

As a regular reader of The News in Mexico City, I have to disagree with your assessment of the quality of the paper, though I realize there is a big difference between the print edition and the website. I read the former. (An acquaintance of mine who worked for a short time at The News said the website was outsourced to a startup company run by a firend of the owners who clearly didn't know what he/she was doing.) I find the stories to be very informative and clear. They run many "briefs," which seems like a good way to pack a lot of information into a small newspaper, but apparently is annoying to internet viewers like you. As to your hope that the new company can "perk up" the quality of the paper, I am sadly dubious. After all, from what it says here, they cut their staff by 2/3.
-Fran Whitehead

[Charles Dews]

The News may have won "a global design award or two," but they could never figure out how to put an accent on a syllable. Can you imagine how frustrating it has been to try to read something like JosACe FernACandez from MichoacACan played fACutbol today in PACatzcuaro, and suchlike? And the foregoing is no exaggeration, believe me. The stories were badly written or badly translated, I am not sure which, and sometimes they were barely a paragraph long. Watching teevee news was sometimes more informative, if you can imagine that.

In addition, I have heard for decades that the O'Farril family has always run the paper like its own private fiefdom instead of a serious newspaper. The way they have just treated their now-ex-employees speaks loudly to that fact.

I have been reading the News since 1974, through thick and thin, and I can only hope this new company can perk it up to the level of a national daily paper in English. It ain´t that hard to do.