Brian Winter on The Stack Podcast Discussing Americas Quarterly
Brian Winter on The Stack Podcast Discussing Americas Quarterly
"We do not have to introduce Argentina or Ecuador to our readers, which is liberating," said the magazine's editor-in-chief to the Monocle radio podcast.
On The Stack, a Monocle Radio podcast, AS/COA vice president and Americas Quarterly editor-in-chief Brian Winter spoke with Fernando Augusto Pacheco about the magazine, its readership, and its coverage of Latin America.
Winter talked about what it means for Americas Quarterly to cover Latin America during a U.S. election year. The editor-in-chief also highlighted how the magazine offers sophisticated coverage and analysis of the current political and economical landscape in Latin America, particularly in light of the region's complex political dynamics.
"While it is true that there is coverage of Latin America in the foreign press in general, in the U.S. press specifically most of it, especially now, tends to be through the lens of immigration, drugs and other things that have a direct impact on the rest of the world. And, look, I was a foreign correspondent for a long time. I worked for Reuters, and I understand the impulse that comes from. But what Americas Quarterly tries to do is look at the region's politics, its economics and, sometimes, its culture, through a different lens, through the lens that what happens in this region of more than 600 million people is relevant for its own reasons," he said.
Pacheco asked Winter about who are the magazine's readers.
"Our reader, above everything, is a professional reader who is interested in Latin America, usually because of their job," responded Winter. "I'm talking about people who are in the private sector, in the public sector, in the media, members of civil society. And that's the reason why they come to us. And this lets us write about the region with a certain sophistication. We do not have to introduce Argentina or Ecuador to our readers, which is very liberating, and lets us get into more nuance very quickly, but often times it's a readership that is familiar with these countries but is not following the news there on a day to day basis. And so our goal is to provide analysis of things, trends and other things that are happening within the current reality."
Winter said that, as far as geography goes, a little less than half of the magazine's readership is in the United States, and a big percentage of the remainder is in Latin America itself.
"So the fact that we're in English and published from New York, despite that, you could say we try to have a truly regional outlook," Winter said.
The AS/COA vice president added that he tries to never lose sight of the certain humility that needs to come with being not only an outsider, but also being an American.
"I've been writing and talking about Latin America for more than 20 years now, almost 25, and to be really honest with you, I started my career at a time when there was this conviction and perhaps arrogance in the foreign coverage of the world in general, but Latin America specifically... The coverage was imbued with this certainty that perhaps the English-speaking world knew what was best. This was the late 90s and the early 2000s. It was a different historic moment. I find that a lot has changed now across the board, and I think that there's a conscience of the fact that there are different paths to development that governments from across the ideological spectrum can bring something to the table," Winter said.