In just two years as a member of The New York Times editorial board, Colombian journalist Ernesto Londoño has been part of projects that made history at the 165-year-old newspaper.
The most recent was the Oct. 2 publication of a Spanish-language editorial calling for Latinos to cast ballots in the upcoming U.S. presidential election and turn the tide in battleground states to Sen. Hillary Clinton’s favor. In turn, the editorial argues, they will strength the position of Hispanic voters in the political sphere.
It was the first time in that publication’s history that the dominant editorial in the Sunday edition was in Spanish.
The day after the groundbreaking editorial was published and was making its rounds in Latin American media, Londoño visited the University of Texas at Austin campus to deliver a lecture on “Opinion and Truth in the Age of Twitter.”
It would be a full day for the journalist. Londoño was expected to talk with students in a journalism class that morning, host a Facebook live chat about the Sunday editorial at midday and then deliver a keynote lecture that evening.
But late the day before, something unexpected happened: Londoño’s native Colombia voted against a peace deal between the Colombian government and the FARC that would have ended more than 50 years of conflict between the two sides.
So that morning, Londoño sat down to write an editorial to be published later that night, urging a compromise to save the peace deal. His background made him uniquely qualified to cover the issue.
That background, growing up in Colombia during an especially violent period in the country's history, also helped to shape his career path and influenced him to pursue journalism.
“I grew up in Colombia at a really fascinating, and at times, scary environment where there was a great amount of violence and hopelessness and chaos, but also a lot of people rising to the challenge and a lot of people acting in heroic ways and overcoming adversity,” he told the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas. “And I think when you grow up in an environment where you’re surrounded by that kind of human drama, thinking about it and reflecting on it can instill a desire to make sense of it and to explain it in a way that hopefully makes things better, brings clarity to a situation that’s very confusing.”
Londoño moved from Bogotá to Miami in 1999 to attend the University of Miami, where he studied journalism and Latin American Studies. In his early career, he worked for The Dallas Morning News and The Washington Post, including a five-year stint as a war correspondent in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He had been the Post’s Pentagon correspondent for two years when The New York Times approached him in 2014 with an offer to join its editorial board.
It was a scary proposal for Londoño who was new to the world of opinion writing.
“I found it really hard initially to sort of force myself to use those muscles and to break free from the constraints that are inherent in just straight news reporting, which was very much in my DNA,” he explained.
“But,” he added, “we all have opinions about things that we get to understand at length and it can be very liberating when you can just be very clear and blunt about what your opinion is and how you think the world should work once you understand how it works.”
He subsequently took the job and just a couple months later was making waves on the editorial board.
In late 2014, the paper published a series by Londoño on U.S.-Cuba relations, looking at “the history, politics and effects of five decades of hostility between the two nations.”
The headline of the first editorial, published on Oct. 12 in both English and Spanish, was direct: “Obama should end the embargo on Cuba.” The argument: economic and political reforms in Cuba and changing attitudes among the Cuban-American population in the U.S. had created an opportunity for Obama to add a big win to his foreign-policy legacy.
Two days later, former Cuban President Fidel Castro wrote an editorial in state-run newspaper Granma addressing the Times editorial. Castro even included large swaths of the Times piece that were critical of the Cuban government and economy. Londoño subsequently noted Castro’s very surprising inclusion of text that criticized the government and said Castro appeared to be communicating that he was ready to play ball with the U.S.
As part of the series, Londoño traveled to Cuba to talk with officials and citizens. He also spent time with government and independent journalists. Some of these visits were with the team from 14ymedio, a news site started by dissident journalist Yoani Sánchez, and also with journalists from Granma.
According to Londoño, some of the editorials in the series were republished by state media in Cuba and some were circulated on the island via el paquete, hard drives carrying online video, websites and more.
After almost 10 editorials had been published, Obama announced on Dec. 18 that the U.S. would restore diplomatic relations with Cuba.
As the journalist acknowledges, the timing of the series and Obama’s announcement raised some eyebrows about potential collaboration between the paper and the government.
Despite the accusations, Londoño explained that the idea for the series actually came during a panicked moment in the shower. As a new member of the editorial board, he needed an idea to pitch the team. While in the shower the morning before the board’s meeting, he decided on the idea.
When it comes to addressing the audience for The New York Times, which launched a version in Spanish in February of this year, Londoño said he thinks it “is a calculus that is changing rapidly” for the publication.
“Whereas before I think we saw ourselves largely as the newspaper of record or an important point of reference for American readers, increasingly in this digital world where print is in decline and where the possibilities digitally are limitless, you know we can aspire to be anybody’s newspaper of reference anywhere in the world, as long as we can reach them in a language that they understand,” he said.
He added, ”I think it’s forcing us to rethink who our audience is and what kind of approach we should take to journalism in order to widen our audience and to find greater engagement with people who traditionally may not find the times in its current form something that really would add value to their lives and their understanding of world events.”
The Times’ editorial board covers everything from gun control to home births, the U.S. presidential campaign to corruption in sports.
Another project Londoño specifically mentioned during his lecture at the School of Journalism was “Transgender Today,” a 2015 series of editorials on transgender experiences.
In a Times Insider post, Londoño explained that a stream of YouTube videos inspired him to include stories told by transgender people as part of the editorial project. More than 300 stories, some including video, now live on an interactive multimedia site as part of the Times’ opinion pages.
As for this latest editorial centered on getting out the Latino vote, Londoño said the team was looking to cast a wider net and encourage debate.
He explained: “Our hope was that by planting the seed and sparking this conversation in communities where people historically have voted in low numbers, that really quite a few will think differently or will think differently about their right to vote, but also the responsibility as a citizen and a resident of this country to participate more fully in the political system.”
Spanish-language media both in the U.S. and abroad republished the editorial either in part or entirely.
Around 1 p.m. during his Oct. 3 visit to the University of Texas, Londoño sat down to host a Facebook live chat on The Times’ Opinion Section Page. He explained the thinking behind the editorial and fielded questions in both Spanish and English.
To date, the video has garnered more than 40,000 views and about 376 comments.
Note from the editor: This story was originally published by the Knight Center’s blog Journalism in the Americas, the predecessor of LatAm Journalism Review.
