Over the last year, I have dedicated most of my time to learning, practicing and experimenting with human-centered design and design thinking. My purpose: to bring techniques and experiences that can spark conversations, confront assumptions, and transform the way we work, collaborate, and produce high quality content to journalism and the tools we use.
This exploration has been crucial to create the first Mexican Journalism Summit at Stanford.
Since the beginning of 2015, I have been exploring the challenges, possibilities and trends of digital and investigative journalism in the US in more detail. This exploration led me to work with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), and with what will be later known as one of the biggest investigative teams ever assembled -- the Panama Papers -- where as a researcher I dug into the documents, focused in research, documents analysis fact-checking and verification. I also facilitated the coordination with the Mexican journalists that participated with the team.
As a journalist in Mexico until February 2015, I had the chance to focus my efforts in access to public information, to ask for and analyze public documents, to learn from the best organizations and share that knowledge. The passion to improve the quality in the Mexican journalism became part of what moves me.
In May, 2015 we published Masde72 Primera Entrega (Part 1), the first of two web reporting projects created to cover the massacre of immigrants in Tamaulipas, Mexico, one of the most important cases unveiled to understand the consequences and complexities of the violence in the country. The Segunda Entrega (Part 2) of the project was published one year later, in April 2016.
As a professor at Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City, a member of Periodistas de a Pie, and a journalist, I have organized and delivered workshops, hackathons, courses, conferences and seminars, both in person and online. These activities have allowed me to share experience and knowledge acquired from my academic work with journalists, colleagues, students and the general public. I have collaborated with organizations like Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, the International Center for Journalists, Connectas-Initiative for Investigative Journalism in the Americas, Migrahack, ONA-SF and OpenNews, among others.
For over a decade, my work has been focused in connecting journalism, academia and civic society. This work has led me to create bridges of communication between diverse members of the communities where I have worked: from the founders of two communitarian radio stations in Mexico, to civic tech community in Chicago, including open data and open government activists, local and international journalists, researchers, students, designers, and web developers. All of them connecting to think and act for better quality of media content and information for a well-informed society.
During my tenure at Universidad Iberoamericana (2011-2015), one of my personal missions was to create bridges with organizations outside the university, but also inside, with Human Rights, Design, Law and other areas interested in the intersection with digital journalism and storytelling. I coordinated the Journalism Area at the Department of Communication, and in the summer of 2014 I was one of the faculty members at the Salzburg Media Academy.
