Update #3 Monday, June 21 at 11:24 EST
TAKEAWAY: I will be in Bogotá this week continuing our work with El Tiempo, a great time to be here as Colombians have elected their next President: Juan Manuel Santos. Stay tuned for updates and pdfs of special election coverage throughout this week.
Colombia’s President-elect, Juan Manuel Santos
Front page of today’s El Tiempo, announcing the victory of Juan Manuel Santos, new President of Colombia. Headline is a quote from Santos: “The hour of unity has arrived”
Inside pages of El Tiempo covering the elections, with great graphic coverage by infographics artist Carlos Morales
Victory day for Juan Manuel Santos
I arrived in Bogotá Sunday afternoon in the midst of a major rainstorm.
“It was so sunny up to yesterday,” the friendly driver told me as he drove through big puddles on the way from the airport to my hotel. “And today is our election day, but you don’t see anybody in the streets here, so maybe the vote will be affected, who knows?”
But, obviously, the rain did not keep many away, and it was probably sunny in the rest of Colombia, except Bogota.
Colombia has a new president, Juan Manuel Santos, who received more than 9 million (69%) of the more than 13 million votes that were counted by the end of Sunday afternoon.
For me, a thrill to be in Colombia for this historic occasion, but, especially because Mr. Santos is a member of the Santos family, of El Tiempo, with whom I have had the pleasure of working for over 22 years. It is El Tiempo that brings me here as we work on both, a new rethinking of the printed edition as well as conducting workshops for El Tiempo’s immersion into the tablets.
I hope to upgrade the blog throughout Monday to show how various Colombian newspapers have covered the event and I will be reporting from Bogota the rest of this week.
*Many thanks to Beiman Pinilla, design director of El Tiempo, and his team, for sending me a pdf of El Tiempo’s front page the moment they completed it Sunday night.
TheMarioBlog post #586