Alejandro Junco de la Vega was born August 28, 1948 in Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico. He is a distinguished Mexican journalist. He earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism from the University of Texas at Austin in 1969.
He worked in the newsroom and occupied different management positions at the “EL NORTE” newspaper in Monterrey and, in 1970, teaming with U.S. journalism professors, created Mexico’s first school of journalism to battle the flaws that plagued the profession. El Norte’s journalism courses successfully raised the journalistic standards in the newsroom to a new level and were the cornerstones for the growth of what has become Grupo Reforma.
He became publisher of El Norte in 1973, and under his leadership the paper has garnered a number of major awards for Journalistic Merit, both at the national and international level.
In November, 1993, he launched the REFORMA newspaper in Mexico City,[1] which today ranks number one among readers in the nation’s capital.
On November 20, 1998, he unveiled MURAL in Guadalajara, Jalisco, which has also become the leader in that city.
Under his leadership, the Metro dailies were also founded. These morning papers offer information to readers favoring a tabloid format. Today, Metro dailies are published in Monterrey, Mexico City, Guadalajara, Toluca, and Puebla.
Grupo Reforma has been a cyberspace pioneer. Its reforma, elnorte, and mural.com websites are indisputable leaders in their fields. In addition, Grupo Reforma’s information is downloadable via attractive, user-friendly Apps available on devices like the iPhone, iPad, or Blackberry.
Grupo Reforma is the largest newspaper consortium in Mexico, both in circulation and advertising revenues. It publishes 9 papers with an average daily circulation of 1.4 million copies.
Under Alejandro Junco's leadership, Grupo Reforma has been one of the key actors in the recent development of Mexico, by waging a number of fights throughout its history, like the right to hold free, democratic elections, gaining unrestricted access to public information, making education tests results available to all, and ushering the Mexican justice system into an era of openness and oral trials.