Book Presentation and Discussion: Mexico's Resilient Journalists

Please join the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, in collaboration with the Institute of Latin American Studies and the Center for Mexico and Central America for a book launch and panel discussion for author Julieta Brambila's "Mexico's Resilient Journalists" on Monday, Oct.28th at 4pm at the Brown Institute for Media Innovation at the Columbia Journalism School. Brambila will be joined by moderator Nina Alvarez, CBS Assistant Professor of International Journalism, Columbia University, Professor Claudio Lomnitz, Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University, and Joel Simon, Founding Director of the Journalism Protection Initiative, City University of New York, for a discussion on the unique challenges faced by Mexico's journalists and their tenacity and acumen in the face of extreme violence, censorship, and corruption.

About the book: In recent decades, Mexico has been one of the most dangerous democracies for journalists. Their coverage of the war on drugs, abuses of power, and human rights violations has led to harassment, threats, and violence by powerful cartels and corrupt officials. This book provides a ground-level view of how Mexican journalists have navigated this perilous environment, offering insight into how they protect themselves while reporting on the most critical and sensitive subjects.

Based on in-depth interviews with reporters, editors, activists, and officials, Mexico’s Resilient Journalists examines the strategies that media workers have employed in pursuit of both personal safety and the public interest. Julieta Brambila argues that Mexican journalists have developed innovative forms of resilience, highlighting their power and agency amid violence, censorship, and intimidation. She considers how journalists have banded together to develop coping mechanisms, protect each other, and raise public awareness. These resilient newsmakers have adapted to adversity by redefining their professional values and practices, rethinking their surroundings, and reassessing their role.

Books will be available for purchase on site.

Julieta Brambila is a media scholar and public servant who holds a PhD in communication from the University of Leeds. She currently serves as head of communication and public affairs at Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography and was previously head of communication at the Mexican Ministry of Finance.

Nina Alvarez is a journalist, documentarian and video photographer. For over twenty-five years, she has reported breaking news and feature stories from around the world, on broadcast and web segments, radio reports and long-form documentaries. Alvarez began her journalism career at ABC News, where she was a production associate on the acclaimed documentary series, Turning Point. She went on to work in the Miami Bureau covering news in the southeast US and Latin America and established the Mexico City Bureau in 1997, reporting and producing breaking news, feature and investigative stories in Latin America and the Caribbean. Her work with the network's top on-air talent was broadcast on World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, Good Morning America, Nightline and 20/20 and was recognized with three national Emmy Awards.

Claudio Lomnitz is Campbell Family Professor of Anthropology and former editor of Public Culture. Prior to joining Columbia University, Lomnitz was distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Historical Studies at the New School of Social Research and, before that, taught at the University of Chicago and New York University. Lomnitz received his PhD from Stanford in 1987. His first book, Evolución de una sociedad rural (Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1982) was a study of politics and cultural change in Tepoztlán, Mexico. After that, Lomnitz developed an interest in conceptualizing the nation-state as a kind of cultural region, a theme that culminated in Exits from the Labyrinth: Culture and Ideology in Mexican National Space (University of California Press, 1992). In that work, Lomnitz also concentrated on the social work of intellectuals, a theme that he developed in various works on the history of public culture in Mexico, including Modernidad Indiana (Mexico City, 1999), Deep Mexico, Silent Mexico: An Anthropology of Nationalism (University of Minnesota Press, 2001), and Death and the Idea of Mexico (Zone Books, 2005).

Joel Simon is the founding director of the Journalism Protection Initiative at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, part of the City University of New York. He is the author of four books, including most recently The Infodemic: How Censorship and Lies Made the World Sicker and Less Free, co-authored with Robert Mahoney. He writes regularly on press freedom issues for The New Yorker, and produces a column for Columbia Journalism Review. From 2006 until 2021, Joel served as executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. During 2022, he was Fellow at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University and a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Knight First Amendment Institute, also at Columbia.