Scherer García, Julio (1926–)

The Mexican journalist Julio Scherer was born on April 7, 1926. At age twenty he was hired by the newspaper Excélsior and served as its editor from 1968 to 1976. Within a national press almost entirely aligned with the government, this paper offered professionalism and pluralism. Scherer was ultimately forced off the paper by some of its cooperativists who, according to some, were manipulated by the government of Luis Echeverría. With other journalists who left Excélsior, in November 1976 he founded the weekly Proceso, which he headed for twenty years. The investigative journalism displayed in the paper, especially concerning corruption in the government, heralded the country's transition to democracy in the late twentieth century. Scherer authored several books, including Siqueiros: La piel y la entraña (1965), Los presidentes (1986), Cárceles (1998, and Parte de guerra (co-authored with Carlos Monsiváis, 1999). Scherer, who had studied law and philosophy, was also a professor of journalism at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. In 2001 he received CEMEX-FNPI's New Journalism Prize and in 2005 the University of Guadalajara awarded him an honorary doctorate. Commenting on his trade, Scherer stated: "Journalism, like surgery, extracts what it finds. Journalism must be as precise as the scalpel."

See alsoExcélsior (Mexico City); Journalism in Mexico.

                                             Raul Trejo