At a cluster of desks at one edge of the cavernous newsroom during my visit, Almudena Toral, the director of digital video, was tweaking a segment — animated by a newly arrived Venezuelan designer —
that she explained as follows: “What should I do if ICE comes for me in my house?”
Nearby, the data journalism team was putting the finishing touches on a statistical analysis showing
the lack of legal representation of undocumented immigrants who go before immigration judges.
Mr. Coronell was an early recruit of Isaac Lee, whom Univision — under the relatively new ownership of a group led by the media investor
(and Democratic donor) Haim Saban — hired in late 2010 as the news chief with a basic mandate: Build a bigger and better newsroom.
“On the one hand, we knew that it would have a terrible impact on the Hispanic community in the United States,” Univision’s
president of news, Daniel Coronell, told me as we sat in his office overlooking the buzzing central newsroom.
As a onetime journalist in Colombia — where his work linked onetime drug lords to political leaders — Mr. Lee knew something his competitors did not: Some of the best
and bravest journalists in the world were on the sidelines, chased out of their newsrooms or home countries by murderous regimes their work had exposed.
(In response, Univision pulled out of showing Trump-owned beauty pageants; Mr. Trump retaliated with a lawsuit and a letter informing Univision
that its personnel were no longer welcome at the Trump golf course here.)
With a team that includes 75 new hires in the last two years, Mr. Echevarría has started new units for special investigative projects, podcasts,
and data journalism, mobile video and informational graphics.