Plaza Pública is an online, independent, non-profit newspaper that began at the start of this year in Guatemala. In an interview with the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, journalist Martín Rodríguez Pellecer, founder and director of the site, described the newspaper as a platform in which citizens can discuss and debate and hold others accountable. Plaza Pública has dedicated itself to investigating and covering topics that the traditional Guatemalan press has considered taboo, such as the agrarian situation, corruption among governments and businesses, and drug trafficking. As Guatemala's presidentia
The first time my wife sent me a Facebook IM asking if I wanted to go out for lunch, I realized – with some hesitant nostalgia – that we were about to cross another threshold into the age of digital communication. I was sitting at my computer in my home office and my wife was 20 feet away, sitting on the couch with her laptop. I could have (and perhaps should have) turned to her and nodded “yes, dear, let’s go hunt for sandwiches,” but instead I dutifully took the plunge with her into the next level of cyberdom by typing: “Si amor, vamos.”
For the second year in a row, the Argentine newspaper La Nación took top honors for a non-English, large site at the 2011 Online Journalism awards, reported NetNewsCheck.
International organizations and the French government condemned the killing of Mexican journalist María Elizabeth Macías.
The body of a decapitated journalist was found on the morning of Sept. 24 in a roundabout in the border city of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, reported the GlobalPost.
A court in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, sentenced journalist Paulo Henrique Amorim, host of the show Domingo Espetacular on Rede Record, to pay damages amounting to more than $54,000 to the lawyer Nélio Machado.
The newspaper Folha de São Paulo, the second largest in Brazil in terms of circulation launched on Sunday, Sept. 18, a WikiLeaks copycat site allowing readers to anonymously submit documents, reported Folha de São Paulo.
With authorities unable to identify the two bodies hanged on a bridge in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, it is difficult to determine if the victims were targeted for using a blog, Twitter, Facebook or some other social media to report on organized crime.
The bodies of two young people were hanged under a pedestrian bridge in the border city of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, in retaliation for using social media, reported EFE.
After launching versions in Canada and the United Kingdom, in November The Huffington Post will release a Brazilian edition of the site.
The founder and director of the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, professor Rosental Calmon Alves, of the University of Texas at Austin, will give the opening address of the 34th Brazilian Congress of Communiaction Sciences.
While newspaper circulation drops in the United States and Europe, South America's publications are enjoying a boom in readership.