Chapter 119: Editing Against the Odds

When your editors say they admire an editor, your ears will tend to perk up. When that is followed by one of them saying “He’s the best I’ve worked with,” you’re liable to ask for his number. The editor in question is Mael Vallejo, formerly at the head of the Washington Post’s Spanish-language op-ed section, which gave voice to an entire region. Before and since he has led newsrooms, edited a book of coverage on climate change, and made his name at Esquire Latin American with one of Mexico’s most harrowing stories of military violence.

Amidst this, it is Vallejo’s vocation that stands out: he has ridden the roller coaster of the industry's shortcomings and miseries, from short-termism to abrupt closures and censorship, and yet, he keeps coming back for more.

DC-Robert Gottlieb, former editor of the New Yorker once said he edited like he lived. Be it on the page or setting the table, the “impulse to make things good, and to make good things better, is almost ungovernable." Could you share the start of your vocation as an editor and which qualities are fundamental to you?

MV-I see journalism as a tool to try to understand the world and then, hopefully, to explain it to others. For me, the editor is a facilitator in that process, someone who serves as a gear to make that explanation not only understandable and - in the best of cases - memorable, but as close to the verifiable facts as possible. The editor helps the machinery move forward: he offers sources and contacts, advice and guidance, applause, and suggestions for improvement. Above all, he or she offers fresh eyes, a detached gaze outside the author's frame that can help find a broader perspective.

I came to editing as traditionally happens in Mexican newsrooms: I was a good reporter “promoted” to editor. That hierarchical structure is a mistake, as they are different animals and nothing guarantees that a good reporter will make a good editor. On the contrary, many times it turns a good storyteller into a bad gear and facilitator. In my case, that “promotion” made sense.

I've always preferred to take two steps back to look for stories off the media radar. I have never liked to practice journalism that covers government buildings rather than stories, that offers only data and statements rather than explanations. I appreciate the work of good reporters from political, judicial, or legislative sources, and applaud it as necessary not only as a counterweight to power but as a link to society. But it has never been my interest. So when the magazine where I worked as a reporter made me a features editor, I understood that the desire to zoom out and tell stories off the beaten path could help me in my job.

For me, the editor's driving force should be curiosity and planning rather than perfection. I'm more interested in the process of digging into unsuspected places to find diamonds than in exquisitely and endlessly polishing them. I know great editors who are obsessed with making every word work, every paragraph flawless. I admire that ability and dedication, but I believe that in journalism, publishing on time is just as important as publishing well. I am not obsessed with perfection in editorial products - texts, videos, audio, infographics, etc. - but I am obsessed with perfection in the publishing process. That is to say, there are moments when one should prioritize the timely publishing of a good text over an excellent text after the news cycle.

Today, the editor's work does not end when the text, video, or audio is ready to be published; that is only half of the job. The other is the planning and execution of strategies for the amplification of that content on the necessary platforms and for it to have a real impact on public life. The latter is what seems to me the most important: what is the point of publishing an incisive, well-told chronicle or report that took weeks or months to produce, if nobody is going to read it, if it is going to go unnoticed in today’s sea of information and entertainment. The editor must devise and plan so that a publication is not only good but also successful.

DC-French editor Frédéric Martin stated that the editor not only shapes words, but consciences. Is there a mission or ethics that you associate with editing?

MV-The editor is usually the first and last barrier between the author and his audience. That confers a clear ethical responsibility to editing, not only by fact-checking to avoid false or misleading data but also by making sure that the sources are balanced, truthful and reliable. This is also the case for the topics or angles you publish.

In Mexico, it seems that “real” journalism can only go into issues of corruption, violence, and drug trafficking. We have insisted on them so much, for obvious reasons, that we have helped to normalize these phenomena and numb public opinion. A decade ago, a massacre committed by organized crime or the Army was usually front-page news. So was revealing acts of government corruption. Today they are not usually the most important editorial topics and, if they are, they are no longer relevant or outrageous enough for the population. There exist hundreds of stories about gastronomy, design, fashion, tourism, environment, technology, or startups that could better explain what is happening in our country than those three recurring topics, but we have lacked curiosity and desire to generate knowledge from other outlooks.

That has been one of my main gambles when I have led newsrooms: to get the team excited about finding new topics or angles, and to make it clear that there are no banal topics, only banal approaches. For me, a good gastronomic text that helps to generate knowledge will always be better and more interesting than a bad text on drug trafficking that only reaffirms prejudices.

DC-There are editors who lament their invisibility - like Gordon Lish, who claimed to have created writer Raymond Carver - and others who feel that such discretion is necessary. How do you deal with a role often behind the scenes? What are the advantages?

MV-The best editor remains unseen and manages to make things look easy, working seamlessly. I'm not fond of having my hand forcefully present in a text or being unnecessarily noticeable in it. The editor should be like a holding midfielder in soccer: he has great awareness of where he stands on the field, predicts the opponent's play, cuts off his advances, recovers the ball, and gives it properly to those who have more offensive talent.

His role is not to score goals, but to make them happen. In recent times, the editor - at the journalistic level - has begun to get more recognition, which I think is fair, given that important publications are always a team effort. However, an editor with too much ego does more harm than good.

DC-There are texts that will require little and others that will have to be reinvented. What determines the time and effort, or the discarding?

MV-The decision to invest considerable time in a text or not depends on whether the information it contains is good and functional. Without story, substance, and information it is impossible to improve a text. You can work on form, but if the background is non-existent, the work is similar to putting makeup on a corpse: it may look better, but there’s no reviving it.

It also has to do with whether the author seems interesting to me: a young journalist who has a good story though poorly told, someone who is not a journalist but can contribute different knowledge or angles, an activist who is looking to send an important message.

I think all texts can be worked with if there exists willingness on both sides. The editor must be able to guide and explain his suggestions, and the author to listen.

DC-While at Esquire, you oversaw one of the most important stories of the last decade in Mexico: the execution of twenty-two people by the Mexican army in the town of Tlatlaya, in the State of Mexico. How did the story come about, and how did you deal with the official lies and facing up to powerful institutions?

MV-The story arose out of a basic doubt. The official information provided by the government indicated that there had been a confrontation between soldiers and criminals. Yet how was it possible that, in an armed confrontation, there were twenty-two dead on one side and none on the other? Later, the AP news agency went to the site of the alleged confrontation and reported that there had been much more shooting inside the warehouse where the supposed criminals were than where the soldiers had stood.

We asked journalists Pablo Ferri and Nathalie Iriarte to look for survivors. Thanks to great reporting work, they found the only one that remained free weeks later, in a village in the state of Guerrero, in an area controlled by organized crime. They managed to obtain her testimony, where she revealed that what had occurred was a mass execution and recounted the details, from how the military killed her daughter to how they shot people who were on their knees.

After doing all the necessary fact-checking, Esquire's editorial director, Manuel Martinez and I went to Carlos Pedroza, the publisher, and editorial director Javier Martinez Stainez. They gave us the green light to publish it.

The main problem was that Esquire Latin America had not been known for publishing stories like this, so we were concerned about the impact it could achieve on public opinion. In addition to wanting the audience to know what had happened, we needed to achieve a strong media impact: otherwise, we would have left the person who gave us her testimony unprotected, at the mercy of either the Army or organized crime. We decided to talk to editors from the most influential media in political and journalistic circles: we showed them our findings, shared our publication date, and asked them to replicate the story. About ten agreed, among them El País, Proceso, or Vice News. With this strategy, we lost the exclusive, but we ensured that the story truly resonated. [Note: the original piece was taken down and is only available on its partner websites].

After publication, we had to make arrangements to get the woman who gave us the testimony out of the state of Guerrero and transfer her to Mexico City, due to the threats she suffered.

A few months later, Martínez, Pedroza, and Martínez Staines were fired. Ferri and Iriarte had to enter state police protection due to the threats they suffered from members of the Army. When I have spoken with them, none of them regrets having published the first major story about the brutality of the Army during the government of Mexico’s then President, Enrique Peña Nieto. 

DC-You wrote that “Being a journalist is becoming a heroic profession in the Americas, and neither governments nor society are acting to protect the guardians of democracy.” What can an editor’s role be in this context?

MV-At a time like now, when in Latin America valuable content has less and less weight outside certain niches, and when a culture of seeking millions of clicks prevails in mainstream media, it is a privilege to be able to keep trying to create editorial products that contribute knowledge. As long as those opportunities exist, I will persist in opening doors for other journalists and for the kind of content that I consider valuable: the one that tries to explain the world to people.

The only option today for an editor is to try to open as many of those doors as possible. There will be media and spaces where this can be done to a greater or lesser extent, but offering spaces to journalists who make power uncomfortable, activists who raise their voices, or people persecuted for their opinions should be a priority for any editor today. Of course, this is becoming more and more complicated to do financially, but it is an effort that publishers must make. We cannot lose the battle against silence without fighting until the last.

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We’ll be off for the next two weeks. See you again on September 8th.