Sandra Guzman, Associate Editor, Out At NY Post, Tempo Discontinued
6 October 2009, 11:18 PM. By LOLImNotClever
Sandra Guzman, who the Huffington Post refers to as ” the only woman of color in the paper’s management staff” has been let go after her section, a monthly Hispanic-interest insert called “Tempo”, was discontinued. According to Gawker, where I first read this, she got some press some months ago for her restrained but open objection to Sam Delonas’ notoriously racist Obama monkey cartoon, and her firing might have been a kind of payback for her willingness to break ranks and criticize her editor’s decision to run the piece. Oh well. Interesting.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/06/ny-post-fires-editor-crit_n_311432.html
(2) 
Post Your Comment
Did you know you can now share a link, image or video?
Click to submit your own notas.
The Huffington Post is seeing ghosts. The reality is the newspaper business is in a big time recession and Tempo never did take off as the NY Post showed the Hispanic market tokenism at best. To call it a section in their paper was ridiculous, it was a weekly publication of one or two pages at best with a transparent attempt to capitalize on the growing Hispanic advertising pie, not to offer legitimate coverage to the over 3.5 million NY area Hispanics. I’m surprised Tempo and Ms. Guzman lasted as long as they did the way the thing was run. Quality survives even during recessions. Tempo did not for a reason.
Sandra Guzman was brave when she stood up and denounced that Sean Delonas cartoon. I was proud yet surprised by her actions given her position. We can learn from that.
Your comment sounds really personal, so I am gonna assume you are a disgruntled writer or editor who worked with Sandra Guzman. I may even know you.
Say what you will about Sandra and Tempo, The work she did at the Post was great as it was necessary. I, myself may have felt a particular way about Sandra but you know what? In the long run, she pushed her contributors to be better writers. She knew what she wanted as an editor and a writer; and she published stories that, ordinarily, would only have been published as ridicule. For example, stories on young Latinos who were entrepreneurs or street/graffiti artists. I know because I wrote some of those stories; and those checks helped me pay rent and other bills. They helped alot of people, may be even you. If you weren’t a coward hiding behind a screen name we would know for sure.
Further, some of those Tempo specific stores made into the NY Post proper and gave another dimension to Latinos in NYC, Latinos who read an English only conservative newspaper, Latino’s who are at worst, invisible. For example, Latino’s who are dark.
Maybe Tempo was a marketing tool. BUT: Do you really believe that the Post, absent of Guzman, would have covered Cheech Marin’s directorial debut vis-a-vis The Latinologues? Would readers have learned about his vast collection of Chicano art? Granted the story was buried in the back of the paper, but it was published. The Post would not have written one word about School of The Americas, the play by Jose Rivera, about Che Guevara’s last days in a schoolhouse in the Bolivian Jungle, except to denounce it. These stories and others would have been ignored if were not for Sandra.
Newspapers are around not to inform the public, they around to incite fear, promote a particular point of view and to make money. So I don’t know what you’re talking about when you say “it was a weekly publication of one or two pages at best with a transparent attempt to capitalize on the growing Hispanic advertising pie, not to offer legitimate coverage to the over 3.5 million NY area Hispanics”. Yo: not even El Diario, and Hoy does that. It was marketing in the sense that it got many people attention to their businesses and careers. But, really? What isn’t a marketing tool today? You yourself are a mark. Nothing last a while in this city, especially good ideas, good writers and good editors. Sandra Guzman had balls.