Todos English, retirement, an anniversary, and the Guadalajara Reporter
Foto: Cortesía.
Patrick O’Heffernan.- I am often asked, as I am sure many of you are, how am I enjoying my retirement. My answer is that I write my two weekly music columns and music reviews syndicated to entertainment magazines in the US and the UK, and I am the English Page Editor of a major newspaper in Lakeside.
That answer is often followed by two more questions: why are you still working at 76 when you could be enjoying your well-earned retirement, and how did you land a job with The Guadalajara Reporter?
I always answer the second question first, saying I don’t work for The Guadalajara Reporter (TGR), I volunteer with the Semanario Laguna, the largest local news source in Lakeside and it’s only weekly bilingual newspaper, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this week. After the blank look on my interrogator’s face shifts to understanding, the next question is usually, “well, do you read the competition?” I then have to explain that the Laguna and TGR do not compete (well, maybe a little bit in ad sales), we cover different stories or the same stories from different angles for mostly different audiences.
Laguna has covered the hyperlocal stories important to the Mexican population for the past decade while most local newspapers in Mexico were failing after one year. And over the past 10 years Laguna has grown from a small struggling publication to the largest source of news and information in Lakeside with a staff of 14 and coverage from Jocotepec to Chapala and often beyond. Over 400,000 people visit our website every month and more to our Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter and Instagram sites. Definitely cause for celebration on our anniversary this week.
Hopefully, part of what I do with the English Pages has contributed to that success. I write two or three stories in English that I think will appeal to both communities, and my Editor choses three or four “notas en Español” for me to translate into English so my Expat readers – you – will get a flavor of the news that the Mexican community thinks is important. Sometimes my English stories are translated into Español for our Mexican readers. The result is that Laguna’s and TGR’s coverage is complementary, not competitive. We sometimes even share resources, like photos, or tips on printing prices.
And yes, I read the TGR every week; I am a fan of Dale Hoyt Palfrey, whose bread-and-butter coverage and writing is as good as that of the reporters I have known from the LA Times and New York Times, and I appreciate the succinct overage of events by the other writers on the TGR team
But Laguna is my home. I volunteer with Laguna because it is part of Laguna’s mission to use news and information to help knit the Mexican the Expat communities more tightly together – something I believe in. Lakeside has Mexico’s largest concentration of Expats and it is a magical place in the way they integrate with the Mexican community. We want to sustain and grow that magic.
We do this in many ways. The English Page is one of them. Another is our sponsorship of events and fundraisers in Lakeside. Laguna sponsors many of the LCS Concerts on the Lawn, we sponsored the concert kicking off the Capital Campaign for Cruz Roja, and we sponsored the Casa Domenech’s 5th Anniversary Concert. We also brought international R&B and boogie -woogie artist Dona Oxford to the Quatro Sentido in San Antonio Tlayacapan for a concert to support Mexican musicians, and we brought Mexica-American pop/jazz/mariachi star Nancy Sanchez to Ajijic for jam sessions with local musicos.
As Lakeside’s leading local publication, it is our responsibility to be part of the community and support its organizations, Mexican and Expat, as well as deliver consistent, high quality independent journalism.
Which brings me to Todos English, a project we are launching with LCS to translate all of our “notas en Español into English for publication on our digital sites. The goal is to give the Expats the same news and information that the Mexican community reads, without a language barrier. We hope that common information will expand common understanding.
Soon we will be recruiting volunteers from both the Mexican and the Expat community for the Todos English project, and train them in the mechanics of online news delivery, and in news writing for an Expat audience (Mexican news writing is different than in the US and Canada). In the meantime we have expanded our bilingual digital presence with the #CharquitInfomativo program of short news clips and links and photos published in Spanish and English all day long on WhatsApp and our Facebook page.
Which brings me to the answer to question #1 – why don’t you retire and do what you love instead of working. I am doing what I love – reporting, reviewing, and writing. And I love learning and working with the youthful Laguna team. They challenge me, they teach me, they let me teach them, they give me purpose. They are my Mexican family, and in Mexico, you retire with your family.
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